Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2021 i Guitar Player

“BILL COLLINGS COULD PUT HIS FINGER RIGHT ON IT ALMOST WITHOUT TRYING. THE I-35 LC VINTAGE IS AN EXTENSION OF THE WAY THAT HE LOOKED AT GUITARS” AS IF IN some space-time-continuum-defying feat, Collings’ latest electric guitar is a reinvention of one of its longstanding models. It’s been upgraded by being back-graded, if you will, to more accurately represent a vintage classic of the late ’50s and early ’60s. As such, it’s undoubtedly new, and the first strum confirms that it’s also one of the coolest things going for upmarket guitar releases in the first half of 2021. The builders at Collings Guitars have been firing on all cylinders lately, and many players who have experienced their wares will tell you that the Austin-based company is turning out some of…

FEBRUARY 9, 1964, launched an untold number of rock bands in the U.S., one of them being the Lovin’ Spoonful. That night, folk guitarist John Sebastian dropped by the Greenwich Village apartment of his friend Cass Elliot to watch the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. Elliot, who would soon rise to fame in the Mamas & the Papas, was something of a North Star for local musicians, and she introduced Sebastian to another young guitarist, Zal Yanovsky. “Cass liked pairing people up. It was just one of the talents that she had,” Sebastian recalls. “That night, I played guitar with Zally, and we clicked immediately. Cass took Zally aside and said, ‘What do you think?’ He said, ‘John’s a really great fingerpicker.’ She asked me what I thought of…

GOIN’ BACK (LARRY LUREX SINGLE, 19 73) The artist name on the single was Larry Lurex, but this languid cover of a Carole King classic was really a pre-fame Freddie Mercury, Brian May and Roger Taylor doing a favor for Trident Studios’ house engineer Robin Geoffrey Cable. If Phil Spector had produced Queen, it would have sounded like this. MY FAIRY KING (QUEEN, 19 73) The cogs of Freddie Mercury’s musical imagination were working overtime even on their first album. A multi-part mini-epic arriving in a swirl of leather, chiffon and black nail polish, “My Fairy King” kicked off the journey that eventually culminated in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” SOME DAY ONE DAY (QUEEN II, 19 74) Queen veered close to prog on their second album, but Brian May’s otherworldly semi-ballad took…

IN A CLASSIC “brain meets brawn” story that began in 1994 in the small English town of Henley-on-Thames, Lovetone gained near-mythical status as a milestone on the road of effects pedal evolution. Merging art and technology to a degree of originality accomplished by few, Lovetone’s intrepid arrival during the “birth of boutique” in the mid ’90s was welcomed with open arms and nurtured by a music culture that was ripe for sonic experimentation. Lovetone pedals are coveted now more than ever for their inimitable (and often unpredictable) sounds, their virtues extolled by sincere word of mouth among a cult following of guitarists, producers and engineers. Similarly, in the late ’90s, as the Lovetone buzz gathered momentum with each new unveiling, the company grew organically and injected life into a relatively…

QUEEN’S BRIAN MAY is a nimblefingered and technical player with a keen grasp of harmony, but his melodic, singable approach to both riffs and solos means any player can learn from his style. In this lesson, we’ll highlight the key elements of Brian’s signature lead playing voice, which is informed by a diverse mix of musical influences ranging from blues, metal, classical and even traditional Dixieland jazz. The licks presented herein demonstrate a variety of techniques, including the kind of single-string tapping, scalar picking approaches and soulful, melodic lead work that Brian is noted for applying tastefully in such songs as “Bijou” and “Who Wants to Live Forever,” all delivered with singing finger vibrato and string bends. We’ll also take a look at May’s clever use of a delay effect…

BY NOW, THE Eastman String Company should need no introduction to the American guitar community. You might say it’s the company that finally and utterly defied the “budget-brand” preconceptions of Chinesemade guitars by consistently turning out a range of acoustic and electric instruments that compete well against quality guitars of just about any origin. The original Romeo, released about a year and a half ago, landed in GP’s Gear of the Year selection for 2019, and Eastman has just added to the range with the Romeo LA, a companion model with hot-rodded looks, sounds and features. Eastman sent us a Romeo LA prototype — one of just two in existence — to put through its paces this issue. The Romeo LA represents a fundamental rejigging of the formula. Eastman turned…

Bacon’s Bits I enjoyed Tony Bacon’s tale of Eric Clapton’s missing Beano Les Paul in the March issue. That’s a thorough bit of investigative work, and the rare photos of Clapton with the guitar in hand were the crowning touch. That guitar has got to be out there somewhere. Hopefully this will encourage someone who knows where it is to come forth and reunite Clapton with what is rightfully his. —PAUL ROMANS Paul Bearer Regarding Clapton’s Beano Les Paul: I get the historical significance of the guitar, but why are you celebrating a guitar when it’s the player who made it special? The Eric Clapton who played that Les Paul was a blisteringly sharp player who turned the world on its head for a few years before becoming a “singer-songwriter.”…

JULIEN BAKER HAS built her reputation on mesmerizing solo performances where she manipulates an arsenal of loopers and reverbs to create layers of guitar textures from her deft finger work. On her third album, Little Oblivions (Matador), that approach blossomed into lush full-band arrangements, all played by Baker herself. “For the last two records, I would just show up to the studio, do a bunch of takes for a week and that’s how the song was,” Baker says of the sparse, cathartic Sprained Ankle, recorded in 2015 when she was just 20 years old, and 2017’s Turn Out the Lights. “With these songs, it was fun to build layers and experiment. I feel like I’ve grown to appreciate the intricacy of production and just making interesting sounds.” Baker’s adventures in…

HOW CAN YOU acquire a genuine 1950s Gibson Les Paul for one-fiftieth to onehundredth the price of the iconic vintage guitar? By buying the amp, of course! Like most comparable manufacturers of the day, Gibson often partnered electric guitars and amplifiers as “sets.” The 1x12 GA-40 Les Paul amp debuted in 1952 alongside the signature goldtop guitar, and remained in the catalog until late 1962 or early ’63, when Les Paul terminated his deal with Gibson and the radically altered, double-cutaway guitar of the early ’60s became simply the SG. While few vintage amps have attained the values of the better-known guitars that were their contemporaries, the GA-40 Les Paul is an interesting and desirable combo that has become something of a classic in its own right in recent years.…

IN 1992, BRIAN MAY set out on his own with his debut solo album, Back to the Light. Released less than a year after Freddie Mercury’s death, the album was a welcome gift to Queen fans, and May did not disappoint, delivering a strong set of tracks that included the Top 10 hits “Too Much Love Will Kill You” and “Driven By You.” Out of print for several years, Back to the Light will return soon in an expanded reissue overseen by Brian. “I’m working night and day right now to bring back this album,” he says. “It’s quite tricky under lockdown — but it will soon be ready — all remastered and polished and with a nice little package of bonus tracks.” “I NEVER FELT I WAS GOOD ENOUGH.…

“I SAID, ‘TAKE IT DOWN AN OCTAVE. MAKE IT GRUNGY.’ THAT AND THE BRASS PUNCHED THE BOND FILMS TO SUCCESS” ANY HISTORY OF the British Invasion would be incomplete without recognition of Vic Flick, a guitarist whose name has as much sizzle as his playing. Flick made a splash on the London scene with the Bob Cort Skiffle, drawing the attention of arranger/composer John Barry, who hired him in 1958. By 1960, the John Barry Seven had amassed fans via Juke Box Jury, and Flick’s 1961 composition “Zapata” was a hit for the septet. While arranging 1962’s “The James Bond Theme” for Dr. No, the first film in the spy-thriller series, Barry incorporated a motif utilizing the raw wallop of Flick’s Clifford Essex Paragon. With one electrifying riff, a decade…

WHEN YOUR VOICE is as strong as Ben Harper’s, it’s only natural to sing with all your heart, all the time. How many other guitar aces could fathom winning a gospel Grammy singing with the Blind Boys of Alabama? So maybe it’s not crazy to consider how Harper waited this long to record an instrumental showcase of his other divine gift, a signature sound on lap steel. Sophisticated, sexy, revealing and rewarding, Winter Is for Lovers (Anti-) was worth the wait. The two-time GP cover artist has a long history in these pages, and in 2018, when he announced that an instrumental record had been on his mind for a long time, he also said he had a new lap steel created by archtop icon John Monteleone. No one figured…

IN A LEAD guitarist’s world, so much attention is given to scale patterns that it’s no wonder the topic of arpeggios is often put on the back burner. That’s unfortunate, as these little three-and four-note wonders — triad- and 7th-chord arpeggios, respectively — can be used to create flowing and highly appealing single-note lines that can be used to describe the underlying chord changes or to create the illusion of non-existent background harmony. Arm yourself with a handful of arpeggio patterns and you’ll never be at a loss when faced with even the most complex chord progression. Or apply a syncopated rhythm to a simple arpeggio to generate an instant riff idea! In this first installment of this two-part lesson, we’ll focus on the top three strings only. Part 2…

SMALL IS THE big new thing at Taylor, which announced two Grand Theater models at NAMM’s Believe in Music Week, and dropped big news about transitioning ownership to its employees. The novel GT body falls in between a GS Mini and a full Grand Concert size, and the GT 811e and GT K21e join the line-founding GTe Urban Ash, which earned an Editors’ Pick in December. Its new siblings offer premium woods, including the hallmark rosewood-and-spruce combination of the flagship 800 Series, while the GT K21e is pure solid koa from the island of aloha like its cousins in the Koa Series. All GTs feature Taylor’s new C-Class bracing system, designed to deliver bodacious tones from petite bodies. Being a rather petite dude, I was stoked to put these little…

DEBUTING IN 1 950, the Esquire was Fender’s first practical electric guitar and featured a body made of pine, a bolt-on maple neck with 21 frets and a repurposed lap-steel pickup mounted in the bridge position. While having only one pickup might have seemed like a shortcoming (and Fender quickly addressed this by introducing the two-pickup Broadcaster/No Caster), the Esquire had a trick up its sleeve — an electronics system comprised of volume and tone controls and a three-way blade switch that provided three different sounds. In the neck position, the tone control was bypassed and a preset treble rolloff circuit was engaged. In the middle setting the tone control was active, and in the rear position the tone control was bypassed. Simple enough, but it provided everything from a…

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MANY MUSICIANS HAVE had to cope with Covid-19’s impact on their career, but J.D. Simo had to deal with its effect on his body as well. The guitarist fully recovered to face the chore of developing tools to deal with these challenging times. In the decade since he left Nashville’s legendary Don Kelly Band, Simo has released more than half a dozen recordings. On his latest, J.D. Simo (Crow’s Feet), he continues to explore his love of roots music in both its pure and modulated forms, with tracks that range from a slightly twisted take on Earl Hooker’s “Anna Lee” to the full-on psychedelic soul of “The Movement.” Along the way, Simo leaves plenty of room for spacey guitar jams. Thousands of hours spent onstage as the main soloist for…

BOSTON’S SELF-TITLED debut album was released in 1976 on Epic Records and went on to become the eighth best-selling long-player in rock history. Not a bad way to start your career. I’ve loved Boston for 20-plus years, despite initially having had a complicated relationship with the album. The opinionated snob in me aside, it ranks in the Top Five of my guilty pleasures, even though it has ingredients I might historically dislike. The guitars sometimes sound totally effected, each song has numerous kitchen sinks thrown in, and many of the ideas are drawn upon rock clichés. It’s not as unlawful as Randy Bachman stuttering on “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” a Bachman-Turner Overdrive classic that finds Mr. Bachman inappropriately channeling the genius of “My Generation,” but some well-traveled contrivances abound.…

YOU CAN’T LOCK Neal Schon down. Sure, his band, Journey — one of the highest-grossing rock groups of all time — has put touring on pause as the world struggles with its first major pandemic in a century. But as you can tell from the epic solos and backing-track jams Schon posts nearly every day on Instagram, nothing gets between him and quality time with his favorite guitars. “I love doing that, man,” Schon says. “Playing every day is something I need to do. And I think as a guitar player, the more you use your muscles in your hands and everything that is attached to them, the better they work. It frees you up. I believe playing everyday has helped me avoid joint problems, carpal-tunnel problems, and all that.”…

DAVE COLQUHOUN HAS toured and recorded with a number of diverse artists, but one of the highlights of his career was working with Brian May for the 2018 Freddie Mercury biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody. Dave was responsible for coaching actors Gwilym Lee and Rami Malek to convincingly mimic May and Mercury’s guitar styles for the hugely successful film. Under the circumstances, it’s possible that, Brian May aside, no one knows the Queen guitarist’s stylistic idiosyncrasies better than Dave. We asked him to share his insider tips to understanding and integrating May’s style into your playing. PHRASING AND FEEL Practice makes perfect in this vital area. BRIAN MAY IS a master of injecting his playing with feel, and in this regard at least, he’s up there with just about anyone who’s ever…

INTERVIEWING TAYLOR’S ANDY POWERS about the diminutive Grand Theater (see review page 86) got me pondering the evolution of body sizes, proportions and why a player might settle on a particular model. When I was a teen, the only readily available steel-string was a big old dreadnought. It looked hilarious on my small frame and was a challenge to wrap my arms and hands around. As I grew up into a small cat with a fully fledged Napoleon complex, I was either too stubborn or too stupid to find a guitar that fit. Nowadays, acoustics are readily available in every size and shape, with an ever-growing number of options more suitable to hobbit-sized men like me, as well as woman and children. Here are a few theories of relativity about…

THE LATEST PR S model introduced this year is the Special Semi-Hollow, which is special indeed, thanks to its hum/sing/hum pickup configuration, which uses a PRS Narrowfield unit in the middle position flanked by two 58/15 LT humbuckers in the bridge and neck routs. The Narrowfield is designed to deliver single-coil clarity and bite, but without the hum, and the whole idea is to enhance the versatility of this elegant design. The Special’s amplified performance centers on an electronics package consisting of a five-way blade switch that provides the usual pickup selections (neck, neck/middle, middle, bridge/middle and bridge), along with two mini toggles that independently tap the humbuckers to provide single-coil flavors. It adds up to 12 pickup combinations, and, coupled with master volume and tone controls, the system offers…

SHORTLY AFTER RE-E STABLISHING their amp line a few years ago, Supro’s new owners set about introducing some solid and great-sounding pedals. The fact that they are the same people behind the prolific Pigtronix effects undoubtedly has something to do with their success. That wealth of design experience and creativity is felt strongly in the new Supro Chorus, a feature-laden and fully analog pedal with stereo inputs and outputs, and several bonus functions. The Chorus sits in the same rectangular, folded-steel box as the rest of the Supro pedal range, this one adorned in something akin to Daphne (or Carolina) blue, and topped by four knobs, a mini-toggle switch and a true-bypass stomp switch. Speed and depth knobs control the usual chorus parameters of modulation frequency and intensity, while the…

THE ARRIVAL OF Rising Force, Yngwie Malmsteen’s 1984 debut album, gave birth to a new genre known as neoclassical metal. Of all the album’s tracks, “Far Beyond the Sun” best demonstrated the guitarist’s unprecedented technical chops and melodicism, cementing his place in the annals of shred legends. Yngwie was unaware he was about to launch an entirely new genre of rock. In his eyes, he was simply playing his way. “When people ask why I play in the style I’m known for, I explain that this is natural for me. I’m not putting it on,” he says. “Blues is part of me as well, but my natural style is predominantly what I like to call ‘symphonic metal.’” REINVENTING THE STEAL Although Yngwie had worked up most of the album’s songs many…