February 2022

Guitar Player

Guitar Player magazine helps you play better and sound better

Guitar Player2 min read
Chimes Of Freedom
IN 1982, I was a student at the University of Michigan and working at the Campus Broadcasting Network, which housed the school’s AM and FM radio stations. It was a great place for a young musician to volunteer, not the least because it exposed one to
Guitar Player1 min read
Guitar Player
CONTENT EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Christopher Scapelliti, [email protected] SENIOR EDITOR Art Thompson, [email protected] ART EDITOR Rosie Webber, [email protected] PRODUCTION EDITOR Jem Roberts, [email protected] LOS
Guitar Player7 min read
My Career In Five Songs
ROCK FANS MAY have first heard the name Andrew Watt when he was announced as the guitarist, songwriter and producer behind Ozzy Osbourne’s most recent studio album, 2020’s Ordinary Man. But the 31-year-old phenom has been a major player in the music
Guitar Player5 min read
Alternative Notion
FROM MARIO MACCAFERRI’S injection-molded plastic guitars of the 1950s to Dan Armstrong’s late-’60s Lucite guitars and basses, and Gibson’s 1980 Sonex line, the use of alternative materials in cutting-edge luthiery is nothing new. While none of those
Guitar Player5 min read
Deep Cuts
BRITISH BLUES GUITARIST Joanne Shaw Taylor’s new record is called The Blues Album (KTBA Records), which might cause her fans to scratch their heads a bit: Weren’t her seven previous releases blues albums? “They were, but in a way they were not,” Tayl
Guitar Player2 min read
LOU REED & STERLING MORRISON (THE VELVET UNDERGROUND)
MANY GUITARISTS WILL decry the Velvet Underground’s lack of guitar expertise, but there is no avoiding the group’s impact on alternative rock or its guitarists. Perhaps no album of theirs is as important in this regard as their first and most influen
Guitar Player2 min read
Brand-new Noise
THE FIRST URGENT stirrings of alternative rock aren’t hard to find. Just look for the loudest, noisiest or most iconoclastic bands making a scene in the underground of rock and roll’s early years. Long before the term “alternative rock” came into pop
Guitar Player4 min read
Spin Art
THE GENUS OF guitar-gear worship includes a significant subcategory that instantly defines a species of eternal classics that we can simply label “anything Jimi used.” Among the ever-iconic pedals canonized by Hendrix’s touch are the Fuzz Face, Vox W
Guitar Player2 min read
THURSTON MOORE & LEE RANALDO (SONIC YOUTH)
WHILE GUITARISTS LIKE Reed, Morrison, Lloyd and Verlaine established the protocols for alt-rock guitar, the players with the most direct influence on the alt-rock movement that emerged in the 1980s were Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. A
Guitar Player1 min read
RICHARD LLOYD & TOM VERLAINE (TELEVISION)
“WE’RE LIKE BLUES from another planet… like rock music for aliens,” Richard Lloyd once said of his groundbreaking New York City art-rock group, Television. “Ahmet Ertegun didn’t want to sign us to Atlantic Records because he claimed we didn’t play ‘E
Guitar Player3 min read
Young Man Blues
A LOT HAS been written about this record, and if you bear with me, kind readers, this is my turn. Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton, also known as the Beano album, was released on the Decca label in 1966. There are many groundbreaking aspects to the r
Guitar Player9 min read
New Adventures In Hi-fi
Before it was alternative rock, it was post-punk, and before that it was garage rock. For a brief period in the early ’80s, however, the preferred nomenclature was college rock, and the undisputed kings of the scene were R.E.M. “Sometimes terms can b
Guitar Player2 min read
This Charming Man
“THE FIRST TIME I ever used a Telecaster was the day I recorded ‘This Charming Man.’ The sound of that intro was always assumed to be a Rickenbacker, because that’s what I was most known for at the time, but it is actually mostly a ’54 Tele — maybe a
Guitar Player10 min read
These Things Take Time
IN 1982, I was on friendly terms with Smiths’ guitar maestro Johnny Marr. We met when he was working in a pretty cool, alternative clothing store in Manchester, England, and he recognized me from the band that I was in, Private Sector. I’d see him in
Guitar Player7 min read
John Frusciante
ON JUNE 14, 1998, the prodigal son came home. When the Red Hot Chili Peppers walked onstage at the Tibetan Freedom Concert at Washington DC’s RFK Stadium, it was with guitarist John Frusciante, the man who had deserted them mid-tour six years earlier
Guitar Player8 min read
25 Greatest Guitarists
(THE CURE) THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN. IN THE CURE’S videos, he was traditionally seen without a guitar, leaving the impression that former coguitarist Porl Thompson was behind the group’s densely shimmering six-string magic. But Robert Smith is an e
Guitar Player3 min read
St. Vincent
NNIE CLARK IS perhaps the most beguiling guitarist to emerge in the past 20 years. The artist known as St. Vincent makes music that is a collision of adept, otherworldly guitar arrangements and propulsive electronica, a mix that has made her a leadin
Guitar Player1 min read
Jack White
AS THE DRIVING force behind the White Stripes, White rebooted the blues for the post-grunge era. The ethos was simple: Take drummer Meg’s kit, one beat-up amplifier and a barely in-tune guitar, and let it rip. The group’s thudding mix of blues, punk
Guitar Player8 min read
Fire Down Below
WHEN RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE were forced to reschedule their 2020 reunion tour to 2021 — and then to 2022 — Tom Morello found himself at home for the longest sustained period of his adult life. While dealing with family demands, the guitarist also e
Guitar Player1 min read
Albert Hammond Jr. And Nick Valensi (the Strokes)
TWENTY YEARS HAVE passed since the Strokes released their debut, This Is It, so it’s easy to forget the album’s impact on alternative rock and guitar tone. As the Strokes’ guitar tandem, Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick Valensi blur the lines between rhyt
Guitar Player1 min read
Kurt Vile
KURT VILE’S TRACKS shimmer with layers of acoustic and heavily effected electric guitars, a sonically rich and occasionally hazy soundscape that provides a warm, engulfing backdrop to his laconic vocal delivery. Listen closely, though, and you’ll hea
Guitar Player10 min read
Time Is On Her Side
TWO DECADES AFTER Kurt Cobain redefined mainstream rock with his raw, uncompromising songwriting and antiguitar hero way of playing guitar, a left-handed guitarist and art school student in Hobart, Australia, took inspiration from his example. Courtn
Guitar Player7 min readMusic
Leo Rising
LEO NOCENTELLI WAS once a sensitive ’70s singer-songwriter? Well, who knew? What everyone should know is that Nocentelli was counted as one of Guitar Player’s 50 Greatest Rhythm Guitarists of All Time, is a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient
Guitar Player8 min read
Embracing An Anomaly
BACK IN 1996, while perusing an issue of Guitar for the Practicing Musician magazine, I stumbled upon a lesson called the “The Warp Refraction Principle” by columnist Jon Finn. An esteemed player, author and Berklee College of Music professor, Finn i
Guitar Player3 min read
Acoustic Blues Musings, Pt. 5
IN OUR CLOSING installment of Acoustic Blues Musings, we’ll delve into how the tools of the trade inform three legendary slide stylists. Roy Rogers explains why his robust string and slinky glass choices are perfect for his strain of Delta blues. Imp
Guitar Player4 min read
Electro-harmonix
TWO NEW EHX pedals arrived recently, one modern and the other a modern take on one of the company’s greatest pedals of all time. Respectively, the Ripped Speaker fuzz and the Nano Deluxe Memory Man are equally cool in their own way and offer hip feat
Guitar Player5 min read
HUGHES & KETTNER
GERMAN GEAR MAKER Hughes & Kettner has long displayed an appreciation for classic tube-derived tones attained via alternative means. Several years ago, the company coupled tubes with solid-state and digital control methods and effects in its TubeMeis
Guitar Player4 min read
Shure
EVERY MUSICIAN NEEDS at least one good mic, and the more flexible it is, the better. Shure’s hybrid USB/XLR MV7 checks a ton of boxes, but musicians might overlook a unit with “Podcast Microphone” written right on the box. That would be an unfortunat
Guitar Player2 min read
Earthquaker Devices
A VINTAGE JAPANESE Elk BM Sustainar pedal has been the source of the bombastic tone that guitarist Wata gets in the experimetal band, Boris!, and the new Hizumitas pedal is the result of Earthquaker’s efforts to re-create it. The story goes that afte
Guitar Player1 min read
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Guitar Player3 min read
How I Wrote… “Runaway Train”
“OF ALL THE songs I’ve written, this one sure has legs,” singer-guitarist Dave Pirner says about “Runaway Train,” the 1992 lush rock ballad that briefly turned his cult-favorite alternative punk band, Soul Asylum, into multi-Platinum stars. “It’s har

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