Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Guitar World

VOL. 44 | NO. 4 | APRIL 2023 The Timelessness of Jeff Beck BESIDES SRV, MY favorite guitarists when I was a whippersnapper in the Eighties were gents from the Sixties. Sometimes I’d be embarrassed by that because, when I’d extol the virtues of Clapton, Page, Hendrix, Mick Taylor and Clarence White, and spend days learning the Bluesbreakers’ “Hideaway,” “Steppin’ Out” and “Snowy Wood” note for note, I was often made to feel that I was living in the past. But I never felt that way when I told people that I loved Jeff Beck, because Beck — even though he was just as much “a Sixties guy” as, say, Dave Davies, Eddie Phillips or Hilton Valentine — always seemed as though he was from the distant future. Besides, his…

JOHN FOGERTY HAS performed overseas many times throughout his career. But there is a mythical quality to his first tour of Europe in 1970 with his band, Creedence Clearwater Revival. In particular, the band’s April 14, 1970, show at the Royal Albert Hall is one of his favorite memories. At the time, CCR — which also included John’s brother (and rhythm guitarist) Tom Fogerty, bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford — were speedily making a name for themselves, already with five Top 10 singles in their first year together. Hits including “Proud Mary,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Green River,” “Fortunate Son” and “Down on the Corner” showed off the band’s raw, high-energy, no-compromise rock ’n’ roll and tight chemistry. The attention and success while touring the U.S. earned the band…

GW ASKED A WIDE RANGE OF GUITARISTS to pay tribute to Jeff Beck, either by choosing their favorite Beck song or guitar moment — or, in some cases, sharing something a bit more personal and emotional. All of their responses, which are collected below, perfectly illustrate why Beck was indeed the guitar hero’s guitar hero. Dave Mustaine I RECORDED “I Ain’t Superstitious” by Willie Dixon, as remade by Jeff Beck, and that was on one of our very earliest albums. I’ve been a fan for a really long time, and I recently got to see him (and all of the stars’ respect for him) at the Classic Rock Awards ceremony in Tokyo [Tokyo Super Jam] — and he was amazing. I also saw him once at the Hammersmith Odeon in…

JEFF BECK NEVER DELIVERED A DULL, UNINSPIRED performance (although he personally often argued that “Hi Ho Silver Lining” belonged in the dustbin). As a result, when asked for Jeff Beck music recommendations, many of his fans are inclined to answer, “All of it!” Although Beck had few bona fide hits during his career, much of his work with the Yardbirds and his Truth, Blow by Blow and Guitar Shop albums are well known and beloved by most guitarists. However, the true Jeff Beck fan knows that he delivered many gems throughout his career well beyond his best-known work. With that in mind, here is a list of 10 deep cuts that are worthy of a closer listen, especially from a guitarist’s perspective. These are recordings that display his influence and…

SOUNDCHECK FOR DECADES THE boutique pedal market consisted mostly of builders who refined somewhat low- to middle-tech designs and relied heavily on obscure and obsolete new old stock parts that were too rarified for mass consumption. Sophisticated, high-tech effects were the domain of bigger companies with bigger budgets and armies of engineers, which led to some stellar innovations that unfortunately often lacked the personality and quirk that comes from more individual creativity. However, recently the boutique pedal realm has undergone a renaissance of sorts where a growing number of smaller companies are developing some truly cutting-edge stomp boxes with intensely progressive technology and features. Hologram is part of this new breed of boutique builder, founded in 2015 by Jason Campbell and Ryan Schaefer, who have backgrounds in engineering and software…

SOUNDCHECK FOR ASPIRING DIRT purveyors who relish in sonic mayhem, EarthQuaker Devices has been on a collaborative roll, releasing limited-edition stompboxes that straddle the line between distortion and fuzz while sprinkling in a healthy dose of aural chaos for good measure. From their joint effort with Death By Audio to unleash the Time Shadows pedal, to partnering with Boris guitarist Wata for the Hizumitas, EQD is at a creative peak in the dark arts of crushing saturated ecstasy. Their latest offering is the third iteration (V3) of their collaboration with drone metal doomsayers Sunn O))) for the EarthQuaker Devices Sunn O))) Life Pedal V3 — a triple threat of a stompbox that combines massive distortion, octave fuzz, clean boost and much more. The previous limited-run versions have all sold out,…

COLUMNS MELODIC MUSE IN THIS MONTH’S column, I’d like to take you through my song “One Last Time,” which I recorded for my most recent album, Electric Truth. And, by the way, thank you very much for voting this album Number Six in GuitarWorld.com’s Top 20 Albums of 2022! What a pleasant surprise! Melodically speaking, the song is deceptively simple, but to me it's all about the articulation and the dynamics of how the melody is played. FIGURE 1 illustrates the first theme, which is nine bars long. It’s really like a more typical eight-bar form, but I added an extra two beats after bar 4, resulting in an additional bar of 2 4. The song is in the key of Bb minor, which may not be a…

“PIECE OF MY HEART” WORDS AND MUSIC BY BERT BERNS AND JERRY RAGOVOY. COPYRIGHT © 1967 SONY MUSIC PUBLISHING (US) LLC, UNICHAPPELL MUSIC INC. AND SLOOPY II MUSIC. COPYRIGHT RENEWED. ALL RIGHTS ON BEHALF OF SONY MUSIC PUBLISHING (US) LLC ADMINISTERED BY SONY MUSIC PUBLISHING (US) LLC, 424 CHURCH STREET, SUITE 1200, NASHVILLE, TN 37219. ALL RIGHTS ON BEHALF OF SLOOPY II MUSIC ADMINISTERED BY WREN MUSIC CO., A DIVISION OF MPL MUSIC PUBLISHING, INC. INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT SECURED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF HAL LEONARD LLC.…

STAY CONNECTED WITH GUITAR WORLD ON AND GET THE LATEST GUITAR NEWS, INSIDER UPDATES, STAFF REPORTS AND MORE! Fit to be Ty’d! [Regarding “The 30 Greatest Texas Guitarists of All Time” in our Holiday 2022 issue] No Ty Tabor? Come on! — David Franklin As a Texas resident and guitar player, I was pleased to see the Holiday 2022 issue. Then I read the issue and counted up your choices. I must say I am stunned that Ty Tabor of King’s X was not among those listed. Known for his fiery fretboard mastery, guitar tone, songwriting and singing skills for over two decades — and not even an honorable mention? And he was beat out by the likes of St. Vincent? WTF? You guys owe him and all King’s X…

TUNE-UPSNEWS + NOTES CHICAGO BLUESMAN JOHN Primer earned his musical education the hard way, playing long sets at blues clubs on the city’s South Side up to seven nights a week. But that training helped him earn plum gigs with legends Willie Dixon and Muddy Waters. Not long after joining Dixon’s band in 1979, Primer traveled with them to Mexico City, where Waters took a shine to his playing. “He asked Willie, ‘Who’s that young man playing your guitar? Where’d you get him?’ ‘Oh, he works at Theresa’s Lounge.’ He said, ‘That man sure knows my music.’” Waters was right on the money — Primer had learned his early acoustic music, and later his electric blues style from the 1971 album Live (At Mr. Kelly’s). Like Waters, he had moved…

HAVING BEATEN ALCOHOLISM, come back from a career-threatening arm injury and bested throat cancer, it’s not a stretch to call Dave Mustaine bulletproof. Stronger than ever as he snatches another victory from the jaws of defeat, Mustaine is now triumphantly celebrating 40 headbanging years of Megadeth. “There have been times where shit got hard,” Mustaine says. “There have been times when I needed to stop and figure out how to move forward. But there was never a time when I thought this would be over for good. I’m built differently; I’m not designed to give up. Things have stood in my way, but my attitude and faith have kept me going when most people wouldn’t.” Mustaine’s habit of twisting trouble into triumph dates to being jettisoned by Metallica while on…

IN MID FEBRUARY OF 1999 I FLEW FROM SAN FRANCISCO to London to interview Jeff Beck. I had interviewed Jeff several times before, starting in December 1992 with a wonderful experience at his home in Sussex where we talked at length about his Crazy Legs album and his hero, guitarist Cliff Gallup of Gene Vincent’s Blue Caps. Over the years I interviewed him about various projects he was involved in and saw and shot photos of him on tour numerous times. But the one thing I really wanted to do was an in-depth interview with Beck about one of his solo albums. It took almost 10 years after Beck’s previous solo outing, Guitar Shop, was released, but I finally got the opportunity I was waiting for — Player magazine in…

SOUNDCHECK IN A MARKET flooded with countless overdrives and distortions, the next logical step for designers has been to pivot toward stompboxes that mimic celebrated amplifiers. Universal Audio, Friedman, Soldano and others have successfully released amp-in-a-box pedals that sound convincingly close — if not identical — to the tube counterparts they represent. Not to be late to the party, newcomer Victory Amps has released their V1 Pedal Series — the Duchess, Copper, Sheriff, Jack and Kraken — that aim to emulate the detailed tones of their corresponding tube amplifiers. Beyond any doubt, Victory has done a bang-up job of establishing itself as a premier boutique U.K. brand with a family of tube amps painstakingly voiced from vintage to metal. For instance, I recently had the distinct pleasure of reviewing their…

COLUMNS IN DEEP LAST MONTH, WE began exploring a great lead-playing technique known as the oblique bend, which pairs a bend with an unbent note on a different string, with the two notes played either together or in succession. Oftentimes, the technique is used on two adjacent unwound strings, namely the high E and B, or the B and G, typically to perform what’s called a unison bend, for which the lower note is bent up to match the pitch of the higher note. But an oblique bend may also be performed with different pitches and on non-adjacent strings, which can yield endlessly interesting results. Previously, we looked at phrases that began with oblique bends then resolved to conventional single-note lines. I’ll now present some examples of ascending and…

COLUMNS LIVE FROM FLAT V LAST MONTH, WE began our look into my song “Pusher,” a track that originally appeared on 2014’s Over Your Head and is also included on my latest release, Live at the Spud. To review, “Pusher” is a funky, syncopated 12-bar blues tune in the key of G, played with a swing-16ths feel and as deep a pocket as we can possibly lay down. A groove like this is so much fun to solo over because of the syncopated rhythms that are built into it. When I’m listening to the groove of the rhythm section — “ba DUM ba DAH, ba DUM ba DAH” — I’m hearing all of these “holes,” or spaces, in it, with a mindset of how a horn section might…

INTRODUCED 48 YEARS ago, the Roland JC-120 is by far the most successful and longest-lived solid-state guitar amplifier, which is no mean feat considering the often unjust bias many musicians have had against solid-state amplifiers. The JC-120 remains popular because it occupies a highly useful niche that few, if any, other amplifiers have occupied. Its combination of stellar clean tone with powerful volume output and generous headroom, phenomenal built-in stereo chorus/vibrato effects, highly reliable construction, low-cost maintenance and affordable price have made it a very appealing tool for working musicians throughout the last five decades. The JC-120’s dual power amp design that provides 120 watts of output and a pair of high-fidelity 12-inch speakers deliver clean tone that hits all the marks: tight, powerful bass, prominent, well-defined mids and crisp,…

BOASTING MONTHLY LISTENING figures of more than 53 million on Spotify alone, Imagine Dragons’ unique pop/rock blend has helped turn them into a global phenomenon. When they released Mercury – Act 1 in 2021, it had been their first album in three years, following up 2018’s Origins. Mercury – Act 2, the second part of the project, came out last summer. The band’s extended absence didn’t seem to have impacted their success, although, according to guitarist Wayne Sermon, they never planned to be away for so long. “We’d been planning to take a break in 2019, but then the world went crazy, and it became a much longer period off the road than we’d ever imagined,” he says. “We’d been recording almost non-stop, though, so we had tons and tons…

ONE OF THE FONDEST MEMORIES OF MY 43 YEARS IN music journalism is an evening I spent with Jeff Beck at the bar of the Drake Hotel in New York City back in 1999. We’d been scheduled to do a big Q&A interview for this magazine the next day. But as we were both staying at the same hotel (something I always tried to do when on assignment), I was invited to join Beck, along with his publicist and a member of his management team, for a drink. I ordered a glass of wine but was promptly admonished, “C’mon, have a real drink!” “THE GUITAR IS JUST A FACILITY WHICH IS INFINITE. THERE ARE NO LENGTHS TO WHICH YOU CAN’T GO” Switching my order to a cognac seemed to satisfy…

IN JANUARY 2016, JEFF BECK ASKED ME TO WRITE historical and basic technical info about 10 of his favorite guitars for his book Beck01: Hot Rods and Rock & Roll published by Genesis Publications. The publisher recommended me for the project based on the work I did on Eric Clapton’s Six String Stories, and since I had previously interviewed Jeff about half a dozen times, he was very comfortable with my input and involvement. It was one of the highest honors in my career to be hand-picked for the project. Jeff was one of my biggest guitar influences since day one, as well as a dear friend. The following guitars represent a great overview of Beck’s career from his groundbreaking stint in the Yardbirds through his very last shows in…

THE BULK OF JEFF BECK’S DEBUT ALBUM, TRUTH, WAS recorded in two sessions and a total of four days in May 1968, after the renegade guitarist resisted putting out additional solo singles in the Mickie Most-approved “Hi Ho Silver Lining” vein. These days, most conversations about Beck begin with how the revered axman maintained consistent creativity and innovation over the decades, particularly with his inventive whammy bar usage on his Fender Stratocaster — and fair enough. This lesson, however, focuses on the late guitar legend’s cutting-edge role in the British Invasion of the Sixties, before he would later go on to help define jazz-rock in the early to mid Seventies. Back then, Jeff played a Gibson Les Paul with a pick, and even without a whammy bar the crafty guitarist…

SOUNDCHECK MANY GUITARISTS HAVE spent years and not-so-small fortunes seeking the ultimate overdrive pedal. It usually starts off with the acquisition of a few decent inexpensive mass-produced stomp boxes before descending into the madness of custom mods, elusive and expensive vintage units, pricey boutique boxes with months- and years-long waiting lists and a never-ending chase of the newest sensation. The Kernom Ridge Overdrive may fall into that last category, but it offers the serious promise of possibly being the last overdrive pedal a guitarist may ever need thanks to its incredible flexibility and ability to dial in the distinct character of a multitude of the most coveted and beloved overdrive boxes. Much more than an overdrive chameleon, the Kernom Ridge even offers the potential to create your own ultimate overdrive…

COLUMNS TALES FROM NERDVILLE OVER THE NEXT few lessons, I thought it would be cool and insightful to talk about the distinctive attributes of various classic guitars and the simple beauty of plugging each straight into a great tube amplifier, to learn what it can do for what it is. Using the same amp settings with different guitars allows you to clearly hear each instrument's signature characteristics. For this demonstration, I’ll play each guitar through a moderately cranked Fender Deluxe Reverb amp, run through a THD Hotplate power attenuator to bring the volume down to a reasonable “apartment-level” roar. Let’s start off with a 1954 Gibson goldtop Les Paul, fitted with single-coil P90 pickups. To me, P90s produce a very distinct tone, one that I equate with early…

“LOVE BITES (SO DO I)” WORDS AND MUSIC BY DAVE BASSETT AND LZZY HALE. COPYRIGHT © 2012 EMI APRIL MUSIC INC., BASSETT SONGS, WARNER-TAMERLANE PUBLISHING CORP. AND VOICE OF THE STORM PUBLISHING. ALL RIGHTS ON BEHALF OF EMI APRIL MUSIC INC. AND BASSETT SONGS ADMINISTERED BY SONY MUSIC PUBLISHING (US) LLC, 424 CHURCH STREET, SUITE 1200, NASHVILLE, TN 37219. ALL RIGHTS ON BEHALF OF VOICE OF THE STORM PUBLISHING ADMINISTERED BY WARNER-TAMERLANE PUBLISHING CORP. INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT SECURED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF HAL LEONARD LLC…