Innehållsförteckning för Holiday 2024 från Guitar World

HERE’S HOPING IT ain’t too noticeable, but I was gone — on vacation — for a little more than two weeks while this issue was being put together. The downside is that I’m feeling very “two weeks behind” at the moment, and I’m kinda stressing out about the next issue (and the one after that). The upside? My travels took me to London for three nights! While I was there, I finally got to check out the guitar shops on Denmark Street, which is basically London’s version of NYC’s 48th Street. (Or is it the other way around?) But the thing is, while 48th Street is truly a shadow of its once-glorious former self (ah, 48th Street in the mid Eighties...), Denmark Street is thriving. I happily spent a half-day…

THE BYRDS WERE a massively influential group whose legacy has faded somewhat over the years, at least in part due to a steady turnover of members and their exploration of a variety of styles. But from their debut in 1965 until they broke up for good in 1973, the Byrds helped create and popularize folk-rock, starting with their reworking of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” the success of which helped push Dylan to go electric. Three years later, they helped invent country-rock with Sweetheart of the Radio, which featured singer/songwriter Gram Parsons. His tenure was short-lived, however, as he was soon replaced by Clarence White, a blazing Telecaster player and all-around bluegrass legend who had worked with the band since 1967’s masterful Younger Than Yesterday. White and late-period Byrds drummer/multi-instrumentalist…

THERE’S AN INFECTIOUSLY lyrical quality to Aaron Marshall’s playing on Memory Palace, the latest album from the guitarist’s Toronto-based prog-stru-mental outfit, Intervals. Songs like “Nootropics” sport undeniably serotonin-surged melodies that get stuck in your head for days — all the more wondrous when you consider how those hooks come framed within neon blurs of selective picking and quizzically complex, tech-chugged syncopation. In a recent making-of documentary around the album, bassist Jacob Umansky deadpans, “There’s a lot of notes, and it’s easy to miss them.” Marshall likewise admits that the group’s own memory palaces sometimes come crumbling down onstage. “We’re certainly human, and I think it’s cool to show that we are indeed playing the music in real time; that reminds the audience that they’re not listening to a backing track,”…

Jane’s Addiction IT WAS ALL going so well. Dave Navarro had made his way back from a years-long battle with Long Covid to reclaim his place on stage beside Jane’s Addiction 1.0 bandmates Perry Farrell, Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins. But “was” is the operative word. As of late September 2024 (press time for this issue of Guitar World), things aren’t going so well. Jane’s Addiction had been stampeding across Europe and the U.S. with old friends Love and Rockets. New music was afoot in the seemingly (but not really) aptly titled “Imminent Redemption,” and the fans were loving it. But Jane’s Addiction has always been a band bred through dysfunction, and this reunion based on brotherhood wasn’t any different. The cracks were subtle at first, mostly consisting of Farrell…

“AS FAR AS NEW GEAR GOES, THE KEMPER HAS BEEN WORKING VERY WELL FOR ME IN THE STUDIO” HE’S BEEN GIVEN MANY NAMES OVER THE YEARS. Some call him the Iron Man. Others see him as the Master of Reality or the Hand of Doom. One thing everyone seems to agree on, however, is that heavy metal was first conceived in the mind of Anthony Frank Iommi — the man who famously lost two fretting hand fingertips while working at a sheet-metal factory in Birmingham, England, and decided to carry on after hearing about gypsy jazz pioneer Django Reinhardt’s road to recovery. Iommi’s innovations in Black Sabbath would not only prove to be influential on the sound of the genre in its most classic form, but would also spawn many…

MAYBE IT’S A generalization, but I’ve noticed that many guitarists who prefer modern high-gain amps also tend to be more open-minded about using amp-modeling technology. As a result I’ve found it a little perplexing that Universal Audio’s UAFX pedals only offered emulation of amps from the Fifties and Sixties. Fortunately, that just changed with the recent introduction of the UAFX Anti 1992 High Gain Amp pedal, which rounds out the UAFX line with its rip-roaring bona fide high-gain amp tones and more. Most guitarists know that the most famous high-gain amp to emerge in 1992 was the 5150, and that’s exactly the primary character of what the Anti pedal offers. However, it goes further than that, thanks to its slightly wider EQ and gain range, built-in noise gate that delivers…

IS THERE ANYTHING Jack White doesn’t have his hands in? The legendary musician, serial collaborator and entrepreneur has been making hay for his Third Man Hardware company by partnering with select brands like Donner, Fender and MXR to create musical gear aligned with his eclectic vision. Now you can add French boutique pedal-maker Anasounds to the list. Nearly all these musical-product collaborations have sported contrasting yellows and blacks and symbolic pattern motifs that he’s adopted as his “Jack White-ish” signature. Appearances aside, White has unveiled some seriously good and offbeat musical instruments and pedals that serve his idiosyncratic lo-fi style. His latest partnership with Anasounds introduces a fascinatingly great and pedal-board-friendly spring reverb stompbox (with an actual spring tank housed inside the pedal!) called La Grotte.. For linguaphiles, La Grotte…

ONE OF MY favorite things to play is a slow blues song, which is something I include in every performance. Each time, without really thinking much about it, I’m faced with two questions: 1) How does one get into a slow blues?, and 2) How does one get out of a slow blues? Sometimes, it’s harder to get out of it, especially when you’re caught up in playing widdly-widdly fast licks. For today’s examples, I’m playing a nice old Gibson ES-335 through Lowell George’s Dumble amplifier, which was built May 8, 1976, by Alexander Dumble. It took me 15 years to track down this amp, and I’m about to bring it out with me on the road. A slow blues tune that I’ve played often over the years is “Blues…

“COCHISE” Audioslave AUDIOSLAVE’S DEBUT SINGLE from 2002, this hard-hitting modern rock song features guitarist Tom Morello teaming up once again with his former Rage Against the Machine bandmates Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk on bass and drums, along with ex-Soundgarden vocalist extraordinaire Chris Cornell. Always the sonic innovator, Morello employs a quick, single-repeat “slapback” delay effect with a 50/50 wet-dry mix during the song’s ominous intro, using the echo repeats to double up the rhythm of his percussive string “pats” over the pickups, which he performs with his outstretched pick-hand fingers in a 16th-note rhythm (see bar 1). The result is a barrage of 32nd notes that mimic the pulsating sound of a helicopter. When performing this technique, be sure to lightly lay all four fret-hand fingers against the strings…

THE EPIPHONE CASINO deserves status as one of rock ’n’ roll’s most iconic electric guitars solely from its association with three of the four Beatles (John, Paul and George) who all often used a Casino to record timeless rhythms, riffs and solos. Notable examples include McCartney’s “Taxman” guitar solo (recorded with a Casino plugged into a Fender Bassman), Lennon’s piercing distorted tones on “Revolution” and Lennon and McCartney’s parts on the three-way solo showdown on “The End.” One may take a quick glance at the Casino and ask, “Isn’t it just a 335-style guitar with single-coil P90 pickups instead of humbuckers?” Au contraire, mon frère! There is much more of a difference than that. During 1961 when the Casino model made its debut, Epiphone guitars were built in Gibson’s Kalamazoo,…

READER ART OF THE MONTH If you’ve created a drawing, painting or sketch of your favorite guitarist and would like to see it in an upcoming issue of Guitar World, email GWSoundingBoard@futurenet.com with a .jpg or screenshot of the image. And (obviously...), please remember to include your name! DEFENDERS of the Faith Stephen Gendron AGE: 46 HOMETOWN: Acworth, GA GUITARS: Kramer Assault, Kramer 5150, Fender Strat American, 1991 Fender Heartfield Rasta colors, custom-built Strat and Steinberger 5150 SONGS I’VE BEEN PLAYING: Everything from the Mammoth II album, plus Nuno Bettencourt, Metallica and Steve Vai GEAR I MOST WANT: Jackson American Series Virtuoso, Interstellar Audio Machines Marsling Octafuzzdrive Charlie Hanlon AGE: 31 HOMETOWN: Millbrae, CA GUITARS: Gibson Lucille, Gibson Melody Maker, Fender Stratocasters, Gibson Les Paul Custom, Gibson Les Paul Junior, Fender…

PERSONALITIES HIS FIRST WITH THE ISLEYS It’s Our Thing (1969) High Wire (1990) HIS SOLO DEBUT A DISCIPLE OF Jimi Hendrix. A mad scientist with pedals at his feet. A Strato-dreamer. A guitar icon. The Ohio-born, New Jersey-raised Ernie Isley is all those things and much more. It didn’t hurt that young Ernie watched his older brothers rise to fame on the back of hits like “Shout,” “Twist and Shout” and “Testify,” the latter of which featured a young Hendrix, who joined the Isley Brothers in 1964. “I WAS LISTENING TO JIMI HENDRIX BEFORE I WAS LISTENING TO THE BEATLES. HE WAS IN OUR HOME THE NIGHT THE BEATLES WERE ON ED SULLIVAN IN ’64 — THE FIRST TIME” That means Hendrix’s appearance in Ernie’s life magically conicided with the…

"I’VE HAD THREE guitar partners in my life,” says Adrian Belew, simultaneously looking backward and forward. It’s an interesting thought. Given the glorious absurdity and rainbow-like color of his parts — the frenetic samurai-chop rhythms; the effects-heavy solos that can sound like car horns and elephant growls and frazzled dial-up modems, depending on what the song requests — it’s almost shocking that any band could accommodate both his playing and someone else’s. But then again, he’s built a career out of team-player malleability: supporting Frank Zappa’s comedic rock experiments in the late Seventies, then David Bowie’s artful avant-pop, then the warped post-funk grooves of Talking Heads, then the gleaming New Wave prog of Eighties King Crimson. And that’s just the first few years of a wild and winding career. Belew…

COVER FEATURE “I REMEMBER BRIAN MAY VISITING LAST YEAR, AND AS SOON AS HE SAID ‘THERE’S THAT SOUND,’ TONY INSTANTLY RELAXED” GRAMMY-WINNING PRODUCER and engineer Mike Exeter is well known for his credits on releases that range from UB40, the Specials and Jeff Beck to Cradle of Filth and Judas Priest. However, it’s the Englishman’s work with Tony Iommi that has proved to be his most fruitful, he having initially stepped in for The 1996 DEP Sessions with Glenn Hughes and the Fused solo album of 2005, leading to the 2009 reunion with Ronnie James Dio as Heaven & Hell and Black Sabbath’s final studio album, 2013’s 13. Following the death of Iommi’s long-serving tech, Mike Clement, in 2022, Exeter is undoubtedly the person best placed to provide insight into…

THE ORIGINAL FENDER Starcaster, made from 1976 to 1980, was a very cool semi-hollow dual-humbucker electric with the misfortune of Fender’s less-than-stellar late-Seventies quality reputation and a few design quirks like its massive Strat-inspired bridge and misunderstood pickups with CuNiFe magnets. The Starcaster enjoyed cult pawnshop prize status during the Eighties and Nineties until a gaggle of alternative players like Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead), Martin Gore (Depeche Mode) and Chris Walla (Death Cab For Cutie) started playing them and prices went up. The Starcaster has enjoyed a second life in various iterations, including the short-lived Fender Modern Player version (2014-17) and the ongoing Tom DeLonge signature model. Now, the more vintage-spec Classic Vibe and the Affinity Series Starcaster Deluxe have truly found their place as affordable Squier models. The Affinity Deluxe…

IN THE PAST two columns, we looked at some rhythm and lead approaches to playing over a 12-bar blues progression in the key of A that’s set to a brisk, country-style “train beat” with a swing-16ths feel. Using this same template, I’d now like to offer some examples of ways to apply rootless dominant 9th chord arpeggios over the progression’s I, IV and V chords, A7, D7 and E7. FIGURE 1 is an improvised solo played over the 12-bar form. Globally, one can think of the lines played over A7 as being based on the A Mixolydian mode (A, B, C # , D, E, F # , G), the lines over D7 as being based on D Mixolydian (D, E, F #, G, A, B, C) and those over…

TUNE-UPS NEWS + NOTES MARK FOSTER OF Foster the People knows there’s a limit to chasing musical perfection. “It was really important in the recording process not to overcook anything,” he says about their latest album, Paradise State of Mind. “For the last 15 years, technology has gotten us to a place where we can make music perfect. Everybody is obsessed with quantizing the drums and making everything line up perfectly. But I found myself listening to music from the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties over and over again. We tried to use some of the techniques they were using back then… to not fix things, but to let things swing.” The album not only swings; it alternately croons, shuffles and grooves atop a foundation of classic funk bass, disco strings…

TUNE-UPS NEWS + NOTES WITH THEIR FOURTH album, 1981’s Ghost in the Machine, British new wave rockers the Police had laid the groundwork for their eventual domination of the global music scene, one that would see the group secure their status as the biggest band on the planet with 1983’s Synchronicity. Inside the platinum-haired trio’s musical bubble, though, Andy Summers, their Tele-wielding guitarist, had a yearning to establish an identity in his own right outside of the confines of the Police. “Establishing an identity was exactly what I was wanting to do,” Summers says today. “I’m not an insecure individual, but as you can imagine, we were so swamped by all the Police stuff — 24/7, year in, year out — that I sort of felt like I had to…

TUNE-UPSNEWS + NOTES JUDITH HILL SPENT many years as a backing singer to Prince, Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder before deciding to front her own band. Hill’s vocal chops were a given, but what came as a surprise was her guitar playing. She uncannily mixes incisive, visceral, blues-drenched solos with economical, “Jimmy Nolen meets Nile Rodgers” funk-rhythm grooves. Hill’s new album, her fifth, Letters from a Black Widow, is a career-defining statement that serves as the perfect introduction to her unique talents. Q: You seem to have found a way to incorporate blues guitar into music that exists way beyond the boundaries of the genre. Was that a conscious effort? It comes out of me naturally. I was raised on so many different traditions of music that are very authentic…

IT’S DIFFICULT TO imagine — nowadays, that is — the impact and confusion that Discipline — the first album of the otherworldly early Eighties King Crimson trilogy — would have caused among the fannish cognoscenti when Robert Fripp reanimated the group in 1981. King Crimson had “ceased to exist” in 1974 as their talismanic leader pursued his spiritual studies at Sherborne House (an independent private boarding school in Gloucestershire, England), though when he did finally re-emerge with only Bill Bruford left over from the Red album lineup, the regenerated version bore very little resemblance to its lean and heavy predecessor. Discipline, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair sound like nothing else in the progressive rock canon — or the King Crimson canon for that matter; they’re a trio of…

“GLENN HUGHES IS ONE OF THE GREATEST SINGERS OF ALL TIME” AS LATE-SIXTIES pioneers of a new heavy sound, the cultural connections between Black Sabbath and Deep Purple are plentiful, and similarities often crossed over into personnel. Following Ozzy Osbourne’s dismissal in 1979, two albums were made with Ronnie James Dio — who by that point had recorded three albums with Rainbow, the band formed by Ritchie Blackmore after leaving Deep Purple in the mid Seventies. Sabbath’s next singer would be Ian Gillan of Deep Purple fame, who made only one studio appearance with the band on 1983’s Born Again. For the album that followed, 1986’s Seventh Star, the microphone was being held by another Purple legend — the voice of rock himself, Glenn Hughes. “I’ve always liked Glenn,” Iommi…

CONTINUING OUR LOOK at my tune “Free Range Chicken,” from my latest album, Charisma, I’d like to present the challenging solo I play in it, which is fun, highly unusual and instructive, as it begins with a deluge of notes that are performed with various fretboard tapping techniques but in a country-style setting. The eight-bar guitar solo shown in FIGURE 1 can be viewed as two four-bar elements. Bars 1-4 are articulated with fast, quickly shifting tapping patterns on the top three strings, and bars 5-8 are played in a conventional manner with alternate picking. Bar 1 starts with an A5 power chord, followed by the first tapped pattern. On beat 3, I begin by sliding my fret-hand index finger from the B string’s 7th fret to the 10th-fret A…

FOR THIS MONTH’S column, I’d like to talk about my biggest guitar hero, Leslie West from Mountain. Leslie was the king of heavy, and the king of tone, phrasing and nuance. There are a ton of things I took directly from Leslie, such as my preference for guitar pickups. Leslie is famously revered for the incredible tone he got from the single bridge-position P90 pickup on his signature guitar, a Gibson Les Paul Junior. I remember being a kid, looking at the pictures of Leslie’s guitars on Mountain’s Twin Peaks album and realizing there was something different about his guitar as compared to a Les Paul Standard, which is fitted with humbucker pickups. My friend told me. “No, Leslie uses a Les Paul Junior with a P90 pickup.” I was…

“COCHISE” LYRICS BY CHRIS CORNELL. MUSIC WRITTEN AND ARRANGED BY AUDIOSLAVE. © 2002 HIPGNOSIS SIDE G, LBV SONGS, MELEE SAVVY MUSIC AND ME3 PUBLISHING. ALL RIGHTS FOR HIPGNOSIS SIDE G ADMINISTERED BY HIPGNOSIS SONGS GROUP. ALL RIGHTS FOR LBV SONGS, MELEE SAVVY MUSIC AND ME3 PUBLISHING ADMINISTERED BY WIXEN MUSIC PUBLISHING, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY PERMISSION. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF HAL LEONARD LLC.…