BEING A MUSICOLOGIST is like being a detective, especially when you’re tracking the artifacts of legendary performers who have passed. You research not in musty libraries but often in conversation with the survivors and cohorts of genius, following leads that take you down sonic wormholes and cultural tributaries. I’ve always compared digging up the truth about a legend like Jimi Hendrix to the journalist in Citizen Kane who searches for his quarry’s Rosebud. It’s like foraging for runes in the Great Pyramids, except instead of sarcophagi, you dig up priceless Stratocasters, rare minutiae of photographs and sagas of performances long since silenced.
That’s how it went when I interviewed the disc jockey who brought Jimi Hendrix and Leonard Nimoy together — and also when I spoke with Spock before he passed. I was working on a chapter of my forthcoming book, Hendrix Now! Backstory of a Legend, in 2015 and things were going well. I got my first chapter written about Jimi’s days in the Village in New York City, where I encountered him for the first time and we sat on a stoop on MacDougal Street comparing notes about blues records; I was set to begin the book’s second chapter. As I announced giddily in the final hours of a Kickstarter campaign for the book, Nimoy had been in touch and asked for some guidelines from me so that he could write something apropos for the book’s foreword. And then that February… Spock left the planet. I was distraught, not only for the loss of a hero and friend but because Leonard’s passion had left such a huge hole in my universe, a terrible disturbance in the Force.
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Denne historien er fra December 2022-utgaven av Guitar World.
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Kittie - Guitarists Morgan Lander and Tara Mcleod discuss the canadian metal powerhouse's unexpected rebirth — by fire!
Guitarists Morgan Lander and Tara McLeod explain that making new music was “not on their bingo card” when the band regrouped in 2022 for a few festival appearances, preferring to think of the sets as more of a “final lap” than a new beginning. But drilling into old favorites — whether the nu-flavored teenage slams of 1999’s Spit or the more venomously groove-thrashed tunes of their late-’00s period — revealed that despite not having raged together in years, there was something undeniably special about Kittie’s musical connection. “Playing with these girls is like putting on an old pair of pants,” Lander says. “It’s very comfortable — and it looks good too.”
McKinley James - Why all you really need is a guitar, a drummer and some serious low-end six-string skills
Nashville-based blues rocker McKinley James came flying out of the gate in 2022 with his Dan Auerbachproduced EP, Still Standing By. His momentum screeched to a halt, however, when his keyboardist split, leaving only him and his drummer, Jason Smay (who also happens to be his father). “For a moment, I was like, ‘What are we going to do?” James says. “But then I thought, ‘Well, other bands have succeeded as a duo. Maybe we can, too.”
TC Electronic TC 2290P Dynamic Digital Delay
THE MID EIGHTIES was a golden age for digital delay, thanks to the proliferation of pro- and studio-quality rack effects units from Eventide, Korg, Lexicon, Roland and Yamaha.
Danelectro Doubleneck
WHEN I THINK back to the Seventies, the famously coined “Me” decade, it seems the only surefire way you could leave audiences awestruck was to strap on a doubleneck guitar.
CARLOS ALOMAR
The former David Bowie guitarist talks Young Americans, Station to Station and the Berlin Trilogy, plus recording (and co-writing) \"Fame\" with John Lennon
GEORGE TERRY
It turns out Eric Clapton's Seventies guitarist (and co-writer of \"Lay Down Sally\") also played on ABBA's \"Voulez-Vous.\" Below, he looks back on a decade-plus of E.C., Bee Gees, Diana Ross and more
FRANK MARINO
The Mahogany Rush frontman charts the band's Seventies lows and highs, plus SG's, pickups and how he was definitely not visited by the ghost of Jimi Hendrix
DEWAYNE "BLACKBYRD" MCKNIGHT
The jazz/funk/fusion veteran on his smooth segue from Herbie Hancock sideman to full-on Funkdaledic member -plus his '70s gear and what he learned from Shuggie Otis
PAT TRAVERS
The Canadian-born virtuoso discusses the rise and fall of the Pat Travers Band, witnessing the U.K. punk revolution and the riotous roots of \"Snortin' Whiskey\"
JOE PERRY
The iconic guitarist looks back on Aerosmith in the Seventies, the decade that literally made and temporarily broke apart those Bad Boys from Boston
