Guitarist Quotes

Reese sucked in a breath and played faster, hurling the anger through his fingers until it spun all his fear, all his rage, into the gentle voice of music.

A guitarist or a drummer can get a cold and still play; I get a cold and sound like a wet mitten trying to sing you a love song. Charming.

Music can be your friend when you have none, your lover when you’re needy. Your rage, your sorrow, your joy, your pain. Your voice when you’ve lost your own. To be a part of that, to be the soundtrack of someone’s life, is a beautiful thing. —Killian James, lead singer and guitarist, Kill John

You hired a female guitarist?" "Uh, yeah. She fuckin' rocked our faces off.

Wanted you to meet Murphy, the new guitarist. Very cute. Laughing, I respond: Stop trying to set me up! Jenna: Your vagina is going to close up, and you’ll need surgical assistance to use it again.

I am and always will be a blues guitarist

I close my eyes Only for a moment, then the moment's gone All my dreams Pass before my eyes, a curiosity... Same old song Just a drop of water in an endless sea All we do Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see... Now, don't hang on Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky It slips away And all your money won't another minute buy... Dust in the wind All we are is dust in the wind." (Kansas guitarist Kerry Livgren wrote this after reading a book of Native American poetry. The line that caught his attention was "For All We Are Is Dust In The Wind.")

Standing out like a punk guitarist in a mariachi band.

Keep your vocabulary as wide as you can. I have some difficulty with the word ‘cool’, and I’m not too bothered about the word ‘awesome’. People like me are looking to people like you guys of the next generation to deal with this shit. It’s like seeing a rock guitarist pick up a Fender Stratocaster and hold it the wrong way.

We were never trying to deny our femaleness. Instead, we wanted to expand the notion of what it means to be female. The notion of “female” should be so sprawling and complex that it becomes divorced from gender itself. We were considered a female band before we became merely a band; I was a female guitarist and Janet was a female drummer for years before we were simply considered a guitarist and a drummer. I think Sleater-Kinney wanted the privilege of starting from neutral ground, not from a perceived deficit or a linguistic limitation. Anything that isn’t traditional for women apparently requires that we remind people what an anomaly it is, even when it becomes less and less of an anomaly.

Things began to go wrong when I was seventeen. My band’s twenty-year-old lead guitarist earned seven years in jail for a drug-fuelled spree of violence. The other band members were quick to let go of their musical dreams, but I never did. They did the ‘mature’ thing: after writing off the band as a teenage fantasy, they got real jobs and made some money. They called it growing up. I called it giving up.

‘The world doesn’t revolve around Tony [Iommi],’ he said. ‘There’ll be other guitarists.’ He was a good guy, my old man. But this time he was wrong. There were no other guitarists. Not like Tony.

Fame is not so impossible for people with charisma, passion and talent. Being famous just means you have fans, and even one or two is enough to make you someone special. Ask a music fan who the best guitarist of all time is, and while one group insists that it was Jimmi Hendrix, another group swears that it was Eddie Van Halen instead. There will never be a time when everyone on this planet agrees on something like that, but luckily that's not important. All that matters is that both sides remain loyal, which they will assuming you continue to be who you are and do your thing. This is all that you need to be immortalized.

Find something that makes you happy and don’t let anyone take it away from you.

Billy Rankin is a true Glasgow rock legend. He has everything going for him: he's a brilliant guitarist, he writes killer songs, he's worked with the best, toured the world and he is one handsome-looking chap. I know all of this because Billy told me.

What does he play? Guitar? I have to say it: I bet a hot guitarist screwing your brains out would do a number on your writer’s block too.

Chris was in the rocker, fully clothed, and was strumming idly on Cory's guitar. "Dance, ballerina, dance," he softly chanted, and his singing voice wasn't bad at all. Maybe we could work as musicians---a trio -if Carrie ever recovered enough to want a voice again.

There are few things truer in life than... you can not play a guitar after doing the dishes and you can't get anywhere in life with a negative mind.

The guitar breathed. It inhaled and exhaled, and music filled the shop as the instrument picked the heartbreak of generations.

I always knew he was selfish and self-indulgent and kind of lazy; those are practically prerequisites for playing lead guitar.

Had Kurt Cobain not committed suicide in 1994, would his genius have survived the continuous incisions of a media that was only too proud of its ability to chisel away at his fragile psyche in the years before he decided that he'd had enough off their invasions? And, had Jimi Hendrix not passed way in 1970, would he, too have eventually fallen into decline, first equalled, then eclipsed by the brilliant wave of new guitarists: Robin Trower, Ritchie Blackmore, Mick Ronson, who emerged during the early 1970s? In death, Hendrix led by example: in life he could have been left for the dead.

I'm an atheist, and I don't have any belief in an afterlife. You could say that I'm resigned to the fact that this wonderful life that we get here is it. And having hit 60, it's a good time to get resigned to these things and not be too nervous or upset - and enjoy what great times one can have.

That moment when you realize not everyone is going to like you, it's a nice one.

You lose your immortality when you lose your memory. And if you land then on Terra Caelestis, with your pillow and chamberpot, you are made to room not with Shakespeare or even Longfellow, but with guitarists and cretins.

Like an abandoned dog who cannot find a smell or a track and roams along the roads, with no road, like the child who in a night of the fair gets lost among the crowd, and the air is dusty, and the candles fluttering,--astounded, his heart weighed down by music and by pain; that’s how I am, drunk, sad by nature, a mad and lunar guitarist, a poet, and an ordinary man lost in dreams, searching constantly for God among the mists.

If this man is in a band, and he often is, he is most likely the lead guitarist. If he is not in a band, he is still, spiritually, the lead guitarist.

While the sound mixing was underway, Bonzo was on the loose, taking care of buisness his own way. One night he showed up backstage at a Deep Purple concert at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. Bonzo was drunk and in very high spirits, and was wobbling on his feet in the wings when he noticed a free microphone during a lull in the music. Staggering forward, Bonzo walked out onto the stage before the Deep Purple roadies could grab him. The group stopped playing, amazed, as Bonzo grabbed the mike and shouted, 'My name is John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, and I just wanna tell ya that we got a new album comin' out and that it's fuckin' great!!' Then Bonzo turned to leave, but before he went he turned back and gratuitously insulted Deep Purple's guitarist. 'And as far as Tommy Bolin is concerned, he can't play for shit!!

Brian came in heavy at that moment on his guitar, the rapid, high-pitched squeal ranging back and forth as his fingers flew along the frets. As the intro's tempo grew more rapid, Bekka heard Derek's subtle bass line as it worked its way in. After another few seconds Will came in, slow at first, but racing along to match the others' pace. When their combined efforts seemed unable to get any heavier, David jumped into the mix. As the sound got nice and heavy, Bekka began to rock back-and-forth onstage. In front of her, hundreds of metal-lovers began to jump and gyrate to their music. She matched their movements for a moment, enjoying the connection that was being made, before stepping over to the keyboard that had been set up behind her. Sliding her microphone into an attached cradle, she assumed her position and got ready. Right on cue, all the others stopped playing, throwing the auditorium into an abrupt silence. Before the crowd could react, however, Bekka's fingers began to work the keys, issuing a rhythm that was much softer and slower than what had been built up. The audience's violent thrash-dance calmed at that moment and they began to sway in response. Bekka smiled to herself. This is what she lived for.

I'd probably love the sound that's made when an air guitarist gets struck by lightning while performing. I'd use that sizzle to flavor my Duck Soup. Of course, I'm open to seasoning my Duck Soup with other sounds, like Track # 3 from U2's classic 1987 hit album "The Joshua Tree." Though I might have to charge an additional $19.95 for such an exotic flavor.

Another surprising fan mention came from Keith Richards, the guitarist for the Rolling Stones, who defended his dissipated lifestyle by correctly citing Churchill’s comment, “I’ve taken a lot more out of alcohol than it’s ever taken out of me.

You can't trust a rock star, ask anyone that knows. Guitarists are always whores; drummers are too dedicated and too intense; bassists too inexperienced, and lead singers are trouble. Stereotypes maybe, but stereotypes are there for a reason, right?

In this entre-nous spirit, then, old confidant before we join the others, the grounded everywhere, including, I’m sure, the middle-aged hot-rodders who insist on zooming us to the moon, the Dharma Bums, the makers of cigarette filters for thinking men, the Beat and the Sloppy and the Petulant, the chosen cultists, all the lofty experts who know so well what we should or shouldn’t do with our poor little sex organs, all the bearded, proud, unlettered young men and unskilled guitarists and Zen-killers and incorporated aesthetic Teddy boys who look down their thoroughly unenlightened noses at this splendid planet where (please don’t shut me up) Kilroy, Christ, and Shakespeare all stopped – before we join these others, I privately say to you, old friend (unto you, really, I’m afraid), please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming parentheses: (((()))).

Are you gonna sit back there and whack off or are you gonna give us a count? It's me and you to start, drummer boy. I'm ready when you are.

Guitar makes even have a word for these baby-boomers-who-alwyas-wanted-to-be-great-guitarists-and-now-have-the-money-to-indulge-those-dreams: dentists

Naomi Isabelle Knox. Lead guitarist for Amatory Riot. Twenty-three years old. Hot as hell. Mean as sin.

These babies ain’t just guitars; these babies are living, breathing instruments.

You ever heard of Chet Atkins?” I shook my head. “How soon the great are forgotten. Google him when you get back. Excellent guitarist, up there with Clapton and Knopfler.

Twenty-five years later, an African American guitarist named Son House sang, “The blues ain’t nothing but a low-down, aching chill.

The bass guitarist looked like he had been buried for ten years, had just been dug up, and was rather disappointed with the scene he saw around him and longed to be put back in his grave.

He became closest to Eric Idle, the most hyperactive of the troupe, who was exactly his age and a competent guitarist and, moreover, had to fight Cleese and Palin for screen time just as he used to John and Paul for album time.

One of the new species is Alviniconcha strummeri, named as a joint tribute to the research submarine and to Joe Strummer, the lead vocalist and guitarist of the British punk band The Clash. It was a nod to these hard-as-nails snails that live in the most acidic, most sulphur-ridden hydrothermal vents in the Pacific Ocean, close to the islands of Fiji. And like many of the band’s 1970s punk followers, the snails have spiky hairdos in the form of a bristly layer of protein known as the periostracum, which covers their shells.

A shrill, glass-endangering scream of outrage from the direction of the stage yanked me around just in time to see the guitarist swing his gleaming back Stratocaster at the drummer's head. He struck with the kind of accuracy that comes only with years of practice and/or extremely vivid wishful thinking.

Bruce is still my friend. We don't talk much. We don't have to. He is great and in his own league. I'm not him and he is not me. But we are on similar paths, writing and singing out own kind of songs around the world, along with Bob and a few other singer/songwriters. It is a a silent fraternity of sorts, occupying this space in people's souls with our music. Last year, I lost my right-hand man, the pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith. This year Bruce lost his right-hand man, the saxophonist Clarence Clemons. It's time for another talk; friends can help each other just by being there. Now both of us will look to our right and see a giant hole, a memory, the past and the future. I won't play with another steel player trying to recreate Ben's parts, and I know Bruce won't play with another sax man trying to play Clarence's. Those parts are not going to happen again. They already did. That takes a lot out of our repertoires.

And my baby says whe's goin' to quit me, I'll tell you for this reason why, Lead in my pencil gone bye-bye! Laid down last night, couldn't help but cry, Wanted to write so bad, I was about to die! Lead in my pencil, babe it's done gone bad, And it's the worst old feelin' baby, that I've ever had! -blues guitarist & singer 1935

Being a songwriter is hard to hide—always doing it in plain sight at school, I mean—but I play guitar behind closed doors only. The lyrics, they’re words on paper. To have someone hear me play the guitar, they’d be glimpsing through the boarded-up windows of my soul. And, to be honest, I’m not ready for anyone to snag front row tickets yet.

A closet musician losing her music is like a baby losing its favorite blanket; when it's lost, comfort is shattered.

Elvis Costello and the Attractions were a better band than any of their contemporaries. Light years better. Elvis himself was a unique figure. Horn-rimmed glasses, quirky, pigeon-toed and intense. The only singer-guitarist in the band. You couldn’t say that he didn’t remind you of Buddy Holly. The Buddy stereotype. At least on the surface. Elvis had Harold Lloyd in his DNA as well.

A famous case involved U2 guitarist “The Edge,” who purchased 156 acres of wild chaparral but wanted to build five mansions on it. Needless to say there was going to be a significant disruption of the fragile habitat, and his building plans were rejected. The executive director of the Coastal Commission called it “one of the three worst projects that I’ve seen in terms of environmental devastation.

I like solitude.” “Doesn’t seem to fit with the personality of a rock guitarist.” “Let me tell you a secret.” He leaned forward. “My stage persona is not who I am at all.” Gina realized she had completely stopped painting while listening, enraptured with what he had to say. “What are you then?” He gave her a mischievous grin that reached his eyes. “Right now, I’m just a guy standing in front of a pretty girl who makes his pulse race.

You’re breaking up with me because I’m not a successful guitarist, and because I seem like I’m just a guy handing out pamphlets on a street corner! You’re disgusted.” This is why Adrian is disgusted with Adrian and has nothing to do with me. Very little of our relationship has much to do with me, which is one of the actual reasons I’m breaking up with him. He loves me but doesn’t really understand me – so, in effect, does he really love me?

Young has a personal relationship with electricity. In Europe, where the electrical current is sixty cycles, not fifty, he can pinpoint the fluctuation --- by degrees. It dumbfounded Cragg. "He'll say, 'Larry, there's a hundred volts coming out of the wall, isn't there?' I'll go measure it, and yeah, sure --- he can hear the difference." Shakey's innovations are everywhere. Intent on controlling amp volume from his guitar instead of the amp, Young had a remote device designed called the Whizzer. Guitarists marvel at the stomp box that lies onstage at Young's feet: a byzantine gang of effects that can be utilized without any degradation to the original signal. Just constructing the box's angular red wooden housing to Young's extreme specifications had craftsmen pulling their hair out. Cradled in a stand in front of the amps is the fuse for the dynamite, Young's trademark ax--Old Black, a '53 Gold Top Les Paul some knot-head daubed with black paint eons ago. Old Black's features include a Bigsby wang bar, which pulls strings and bends notes, and Firebird picking so sensitive you can talk through it. It's a demonic instrument. "Old black doesn't sound like any other guitar," said Cragg, shaking his head. For Cragg, Old Black is a nightmare. Young won't permit the ancient frets to be changed, likes his strings old and used, and the Bigsby causes the guitar to go out of tune constantly. "At Sound check, everything will work great. Neil picks up the guitar, and for some reason that's when things go wrong.

neuroscientists monitored guitarists playing a short melody together, they found that patterns in the guitarists’ brain activity became synchronized. Similarly, studies of choir singers have shown that singing aligns performers’ heart rates. Music seems to create a sense of unity on a physiological level. Scientists call this phenomenon synchrony and have found that it can elicit some surprising behaviors. In studies where people sang or moved in a coordinated way with others, researchers found that subjects were significantly more likely to help out a partner with their workload or sacrifice their own gain for the benefit of the group. And when participants rocked in chairs at the same tempo, they performed better on a cooperative task than those who rocked at different rhythms. Synchrony shifts our focus away from our own needs toward the needs of the group. In large social gatherings, this can give rise to a euphoric feeling of oneness—dubbed “collective effervescence” by French sociologist Émile Durkheim—which elicits a blissful, selfless absorption within a community.

RESURRECTION OF DJANGO He was born in a gypsy caravan and spent his early years on the road in Belgium, playing the banjo for a dancing bear and a goat. He was eighteen when his wagon caught fire and he was left for dead. He lost a leg, a hand. Goodbye road, goodbye music. But as they were about to amputate, he regained the use of his leg. And from his lost hand he managed to save two fingers and become one of the best jazz guitarists in history. There was a secret pact between Django Reinhardt and his guitar. If he would play her, she would lend him the fingers he lacked.

Try to imagine the calamity of that: Zack, age twenty-eight, with no management experience, gets training from Dave, a weekend rock guitarist, on how to apply a set of fundamentally unsound psychological principles as a way to manipulate the people who report to him. If you put a room full of journalists into this situation they would immediately begin ripping on each other, taking the piss out of the instructors, asking intentionally stupid questions. If the boss wants us to waste half a day on Romper Room bullshit, we could at least have some fun. My HubSpot colleagues, however, seem to take the DISC personality assessment seriously. The

I love helping people fulfill their dreams, but I also want to revive some of my old dreams as well. Dr. Dale E. Turner once wrote, “Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born.” As a kid, I had a lot of dreams. I wanted to be an explorer, an Oscar-winning leading man, a rock guitarist/singer. But I got into a groove and I began to let those dreams go and accept they weren’t going to happen. Now, I think I’ve reached a point where I want to quench the thirst of all my dreams. If they don’t come to fruition in the exact way I envisioned them, that’s okay. I at least want to pursue them.

Here’s a valuable lesson I’ve learned from working as a music journalist for nearly twenty years: if given the choice between interviewing a hip, up-and-coming musician and interviewing a past-his-prime has-been, take the has-been every single time. Some of my favorite interviews ever are with artists whose music I don’t even like. I’m talking about the time that Poison guitarist C. C. DeVille told me about how he used to drink paint thinner when he ran out of booze. Or when Kip Winger told me he still hates Lars Ulrich for throwing a dart at a Winger poster in Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” video. Has-beens have nothing to lose, whereas younger, hipper artists must think politically, as being candid can hurt you in the long run.

I knew that being funny always came in second to musicians. (In the world of music, there’s a hierarchy, too—it’s my contention that bass players tend to get laid first, because they’re stolid and cool and their fingers move in gentle yet powerful ways [except for Paul Mc-Cartney; he never got laid first]; drummers come next because they’re all power and grit; then guitarists because they get those fancy solos; then, weirdly, the lead singer, because even though he’s out there up front, he never quite looks fully sexy when he has to throw his head back and reveal his molars to hit a high note.) Whatever the correct order, I knew I was way behind Eddie Van Halen—not only was he a musician, which means he was able to get laid more easily than someone who is funny, but he was also already married to the object of my desire.

What was captured on tape sounded apocalyptic. 'Eruption' (first titled 'Guitar Solo,' according to the song’s track sheet), takes flight after a quick drum fill and a power chord. Edward sends notes and harmonics soaring before diving down with some gravity-defying tremolo bar bends. Alex and Michael then fire off a flak burst of three chords. Edward maneuvers again, twisting and turning, strafing and bombing before turning on the jets and heading skyward with a flurry of notes. He recedes again, leaving only a descending low note in his wake. After another pause, he attacks again, faster than ever. He weaves and twists and then unleashes his secret weapon: his two-handed tapping technique that would astound and confound guitarists across the world. Finally, an atomic blast, courtesy of Edward’s Univox echo chamber, concludes this minute and forty-three seconds of open warfare on the guitar world.

But since we’re on the topic of identity and narrative voice - here’s an interesting conundrum. You may know that The Correspondence Artist won a Lambda Award. I love the Lambda Literary Foundation, and I was thrilled to win a Lammy. My book won in the category of “Bisexual Fiction.” The Awards (or nearly all of them) are categorized according to the sexual identity of the dominant character in a work of fiction, not the author. I’m not sure if “dominant” is the word they use, but you get the idea. The foregrounded character. In The Correspondence Artist, the narrator is a woman, but you’re never sure about the gender of her lover. You’re also never sure about the lover’s age or ethnicity - these things change too, and pretty dramatically. Also, sometimes when the narrator corresponds with her lover by email, she (the narrator) makes reference to her “hard on.” That is, part of her erotic play with her lover has to do with destabilizing the ways she refers to her own sex (by which I mean both gender and naughty bits). So really, the narrator and her lover are only verifiably “bisexual” in the Freudian sense of the term - that is, it’s unclear if they have sex with people of the same sex, but they each have a complex gender identity that shifts over time. Looking at the various possible categorizations for that book, I think “Bisexual Fiction” was the most appropriate, but better, of course, would have been “Queer Fiction.” Maybe even trans, though surely that would have raised some hackles. So, I just submitted I’m Trying to Reach You for this year’s Lambda Awards and I had to choose a category. Well. As I said, the narrator identifies as a gay man. I guess you’d say the primary erotic relationship is with his boyfriend, Sven. But he has an obsession with a weird middle-aged white lady dancer on YouTube who happens to be me, and ultimately you come to understand that she is involved in an erotic relationship with a lesbian electric guitarist. And this romance isn’t just a titillating spectacle for a voyeuristic narrator: it turns out to be the founding myth of our national poetics! They are Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman! Sorry for all the spoilers. I never mind spoilers because I never read for plot. Maybe the editor (hello Emily) will want to head plot-sensitive readers off at the pass if you publish this paragraph. Anyway, the question then is: does authorial self-referentiality matter? Does the national mythos matter? Is this a work of Bisexual or Lesbian Fiction? Is Walt trans? I ended up submitting the book as Gay (Male) Fiction. The administrator of the prizes also thought this was appropriate, since Gray is the narrator. And Gray is not me, but also not not me, just as Emily Dickinson is not me but also not not me, and Walt Whitman is not my lover but also not not my lover. Again, it’s a really queer book, but the point is kind of to trip you up about what you thought you knew about gender anyway.

Maybe you are a nihilistic death-metal punk. You are deeply skeptical and pessimistic. You find meaning nowhere. You hate everything, just on principle. But then your favorite nihilistic death-metal punk band lead guitarist and his bandmates start to blast out their patterned harmonies—each in alignment with the other—and you are caught! “Ah, I do not believe in anything—but, God, that music!” And the lyrics are destructive and nihilistic and cynical and bitter and hopeless but it does not matter, because the music beckons and calls to your spirit, and fills it with the intimation of meaning, and moves you, so that you align yourself with the patterns, and you nod your head and tap your feet to the beat, participating despite yourself. It is those patterns of sound, layered one on top of another, harmoniously, moving in the same direction, predictably and unpredictably, in perfect balance: order and chaos, in their eternal dance. And you dance with it, no matter how scornful you are. You align yourself with that patterned, directional harmony. And in that you find the meaning that sustains.

right to use Apple Corps for their record and business holdings. Alas, this did not resolve the issue of getting the Beatles onto iTunes. For that to happen, the Beatles and EMI Music, which held the rights to most of their songs, had to negotiate their own differences over how to handle the digital rights. “The Beatles all want to be on iTunes,” Jobs later recalled, “but they and EMI are like an old married couple. They hate each other but can’t get divorced. The fact that my favorite band was the last holdout from iTunes was something I very much hoped I would live to resolve.” As it turned out, he would. Bono Bono, the lead singer of U2, deeply appreciated Apple’s marketing muscle. He was confident that his Dublin-based band was still the best in the world, but in 2004 it was trying, after almost thirty years together, to reinvigorate its image. It had produced an exciting new album with a song that the band’s lead guitarist, The Edge, declared to be “the mother of all rock tunes.” Bono knew he needed to find a way to get it some traction, so he placed a call to Jobs. “I wanted something specific from Apple,” Bono recalled. “We had a song called ‘Vertigo’ that featured an aggressive guitar riff that I knew would be contagious, but only if people were exposed to it many, many times.” He was worried that the era of promoting a song through airplay on the radio was over. So Bono visited Jobs at home in Palo Alto, walked around the garden, and made an unusual pitch. Over the years U2 had spurned

Danny and the Memories was the band at the root of Crazy Horse. They were a vocal group with Danny Whitten, Ralphie, Billy, and a guy named Ben Rocco. When I recently saw their old video of "Land of a Thousand Dances" on You-Tube, I realized that is is truly the shit. You know, I looked at it maybe twenty times in a row. Even though Danny was amazing and he held the Horse together in the early days, I did not know how great Danny was until I saw this! The moves! What an amazing dancer he was. His presence on that performance is elevating! He is gone, and no one can change that. We will never see and hear where he was going. I am telling you, the world missed one of the greatest when Danny and the Memories did not have a NUMBER ONE smash record back in the day. They were so musical, with great harmonies, and Danny was a total knockout! I am so moved by this that it could make me cry at any time. This is one of those many times when words can't describe the music. Danny and the Memories eventually transformed into the Rockets; they were playing in this old house in Laurel Canyon, and I somehow connected with them while Buffalo Springfield was at the Whiskey. We had a lot of pots jams in the house. Later on I saw Danny and the guys at somebody's house in Topanga. After that I asked if Danny, Billy, and Ralphie would play on a record with me. We did one day, practicing in my Topanga house, and it sounded great. I named the band Crazy Horse and away we went. The Rockets were still together, but this was a different deal. At that time, I thought Danny was a great guitarist and singer. I had no idea how great, though. I just was too full of myself to see it. Now I see it clearly. I wish I could do that again, because more of Danny would be there. I have made an Early Daze record of the Horse, and you can hear a different vocal of "Cinnamon Girl" featuring more of Danny. He was singing the high part and it came through big-time. I changed it so I sang the high part and put that out. That was a big mistake. I fucked up. I did not know who Danny was. He was better than me. I didn't see it. I was strong, and maybe I helped destroy something sacred by not seeing it. He was never pissed off about it. I wasn't like that. I was young, and maybe I didn't know what I was doing. Some things you wish never happened. But we got what we got. I never really saw him a sing and move until I saw that "Land of a Thousand Dances" video. I could watch it over and over. I can't believe it. It's just one of those things. My heart aches for what happened to him. These memories are what make Crazy Horse great today. And now we don't have Briggs, either, for the next record, but we have the spirit and the heart to go on. And we have John Hanlong, taught by Briggs, to engineer this sucker. It will rock and cry. Please let's get to this before life comes knocking again.

American DEWAR FAMILY Cameron Dewar Ursula “Beep” Dewar, his sister Woody Dewar, his father Bella Dewar, his mother PESHKOV-JAKES FAMILY George Jakes Jacky Jakes, his mother Greg Peshkov, his father Lev Peshkov, his grandfather Marga, his grandmother MARQUAND FAMILY Verena Marquand Percy Marquand, her father Babe Lee, her mother CIA Florence Geary Tony Savino Tim Tedder, semiretired Keith Dorset OTHERS Maria Summers Joseph Hugo, FBI Larry Mawhinney, Pentagon Nelly Fordham, old flame of Greg Peshkov Dennis Wilson, aide to Bobby Kennedy Skip Dickerson, aide to Lyndon Johnson Leopold “Lee” Montgomery, reporter Herb Gould, television journalist on This Day Suzy Cannon, gossip reporter Frank Lindeman, television network owner REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth U.S. president Jackie, his wife Bobby Kennedy, his brother Dave Powers, assistant to President Kennedy Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy’s press officer Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Lyndon B. Johnson, thirty-sixth U.S. president Richard Nixon, thirty-seventh U.S. president Jimmy Carter, thirty-ninth U.S. president Ronald Reagan, fortieth U.S. president George H. W. Bush, forty-first U.S. president British LECKWITH-WILLIAMS FAMILY Dave Williams Evie Williams, his sister Daisy Williams, his mother Lloyd Williams, M.P., his father Eth Leckwith, Dave’s grandmother MURRAY FAMILY Jasper Murray Anna Murray, his sister Eva Murray, his mother MUSICIANS IN THE GUARDSMEN AND PLUM NELLIE Lenny, Dave Williams’s cousin Lew, drummer Buzz, bass player Geoffrey, lead guitarist OTHERS Earl Fitzherbert, called Fitz Sam Cakebread, friend of Jasper Murray Byron Chesterfield (real name Brian Chesnowitz), music agent Hank Remington (real name Harry Riley), pop star Eric Chapman, record company executive German FRANCK FAMILY Rebecca Hoffmann Carla Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive mother Werner Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive father Walli Franck, son of Carla Lili Franck, daughter of Werner and Carla Maud von Ulrich, née Fitzherbert, Carla’s mother Hans Hoffmann, Rebecca’s husband OTHERS Bernd Held, schoolteacher Karolin Koontz, folksinger Odo Vossler, clergyman REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Walter Ulbricht, first secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (Communist) Erich Honecker, Ulbricht’s successor Egon Krenz, successor to Honecker Polish Stanislaw “Staz” Pawlak, army officer Lidka, girlfriend of Cam Dewar Danuta Gorski, Solidarity activist REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Anna Walentynowicz, crane driver Lech Wałesa, leader of the trade union Solidarity General Jaruzelski, prime minister Russian DVORKIN-PESHKOV FAMILY Tanya Dvorkin, journalist Dimka Dvorkin, Kremlin aide, Tanya’s twin brother Anya Dvorkin, their mother Grigori Peshkov, their grandfather Katerina Peshkov, their grandmother Vladimir, always called Volodya, their uncle Zoya, Volodya’s wife Nina, Dimka’s girlfriend OTHERS Daniil Antonov, features editor at TASS Pyotr Opotkin, features editor in chief Vasili Yenkov, dissident Natalya Smotrov, official in the Foreign Ministry

That was the thing about Joy Division: writing the songs was dead easy because the group was really balanced; we had a great guitarist, a great drummer, a great bass player, a great singer.

The troupe also made a 20,000–mile trip into the European war. Hope was the first American entertainer to perform in Sicily. He did a show at Messina just after the enemy had fled the town and was still bombarding the area with its artillery. By the end of the war, it was estimated that Hope had appeared at virtually every camp, naval base, and hospital in the country. He had made half a dozen trips overseas, including a tour of the South Pacific in 1944 that was highlighted by a crash landing in Australia. With him then was the same crew that had gone to Italy the year before: Langford, Colonna, dancer Patty Thomas, guitarist Tony Romano, and an old vaudeville pal, Barney Dean. Newsweek called it “the biggest entertainment giveaway in history,” a pace that no one in show business has ever equaled. “It is impossible to see how he can do so much, can cover so much ground, can work so hard, and can be so effective,” novelist John Steinbeck said of Hope. For his service to the country, Hope was given more than 100 awards and citations and two special Oscars. He was voted a place in the Smithsonian’s Living Hall of Fame.

Cutting abandonment rate became a key priority, and solving for that meant thinking beyond a “connected guitar.” So Fender launched a new subscription-based online video teaching service called Fender Play, which teaches guitarists to perform their first riff or song in a half hour or less. (I’m a fan—so far I’ve learned three open string chords: C, D, and G. Let’s hope I don’t plateau.)

Guitarists always start in the bedroom

The guitarist is dependent on the guitar, which is dependent upon the creation, which is dependent on whatever creative forces or realities are responsible for its existence. If you call this creative force or reality "God," then art really could be thought of as the language God speaks. All art is rooted in whatever is the foundation of everything.

The problem in the DDR wasn't No Future, the rallying cry of British Punk. As Planlos guitarist Kobs liked to say, the problem in East Germany was Too Much Future.

...but Freddie was a very sweet man. He was a good arbitrator. Chris and [Jeremy Gallop, guitarist of Sour Milk Sea] used to argue like hell. I used to have fights with the bass player—and get beaten up—and Fred was always the one who’d cool down the situation with diplomacy. On stage, Freddie became quite a different personality—he was as electric as he was in later life. Otherwise he was quite calm. I’ll always remember him being strangely quiet and very well-mannered. Extremely well-mannered, in fact. My mum liked him.

Based on the findings of a recent qualitative survey carried out in Switzerland, in fact, most of us have up to ten discreet interdependent social identities—identities, the study concludes, which are often in conflict.16 Let’s imagine a middle-aged bank teller living in Pensacola, Florida. He is a father, a son and a husband. He is a Floridian. He is a bank employee. He is also a bicyclist and a recreational runner, and at night, drinking with his friends, he is “the funny one.” He is also a vegetarian, an amateur guitarist, and on weekends he helps coach soccer at his daughter’s high school. Then there are his online identities, including his Facebook, Twitter and Instagram selves. Most surprising is that the man’s ethical mind-set, honesty, sociability and even level of social engagement changes from personality to personality. Imagine that in his professional role, for example, he may be primed to dissembling, or outright deceit, while simultaneously, as a dad, he finds dishonesty repellent.

GUITARISTS are amazing musicians! It’s like they have magical fingers. They play their guitar with immense passion, confidence, and devotion.

In 1969 the Swedish folklorist Bengt Olsson and his partner, Peter Mahlin, spent a summer loitering around Beale Street in Memphis, interviewing and recording blues musicians. I'm certain it was hot, thankless work. In 1970, Olsson compiled some of those interviews into a short, now long-out-of-print book called Memphis Blues. In it, Olsson recounts a conversation with the guitarist Furry Lewis, who was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1893 and come up playing blues with the Memphis legend W.C. Handy. Olsson never did much editorializing on the page - he just presented the material he'd collected - but there's a quote toward the end of the Lewis chapter that's become lodged permanently in my cortex, repeating endlessly like a koan: 'The people I used to play around with, they all done died out,' Lewis tells Olsson. 'And sometimes I get scared myself, 'cause it look like to me it gonna be mine next. You know, it's a funny thing, but you can do a thing for a-many years, and all of them die out and you still here,' he continued. 'And you know, that's more than a notion if you come up and just think about it.' I had thought about it. And I knew they were all still here, together, etched into shellac, tucked into sleeves. I could hear them.

The freak show was about to begin. Spotlights flooded the musicians powered by solar panels near a massive amplifier. The guitarist continued playing and the others joined in, playing a raucous crossover between hard rock and heavy metal. The one with long blond hair grabbed hold of the microphone and belted out a shattering cry that sounded like a call to battle. The crowd went pin drop silent to listen and then cheered in unison as the band played on. The front man sang piercing growls and low croons about the Knights in Stone, the protectors of the ancient forests, battling against the evil tree witches... Kayla's coven.

The tree witches kept to themselves, a self-sufficient coven specializing in certain skills. The witches sang, played music, and danced at the gatherings around the fire, but nothing like what she'd experienced when the gargoyles transformed. After the first night, she was hooked.It was a risk to return but one she was willing to take. She'd ventured to that different world to hear the unique groups, especially to watch the guitarist with hair as black as midnight.

Guitarists are always whores; drummers are too dedicated and too intense; bassists too inexperienced, and lead singers are trouble. Stereotypes maybe, but stereotypes are there for a reason,

Inside the studio walls the alpha male personalities of James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich battled for territory, their sometimes discordant creative visions coalescing to the point where no aspect of the music being made was left unexamined or unsubjected to alternative methods of interpretation. The pair were learning that in order that an instrument in a song be emphasised, by definition another instrument must be de-emphasised, thus beginning a battle between guitarist and drummer, the energy from which would fuel the group for years to come.

While this signifier can be difficult to pin down with precision, it can clearly be heard in the records of Duane Eddy and many other guitarists of the period. It usually involves a relatively nondistorted electric guitar timbre articulated with a strong attack and a melody played on the lower strings. Reverberation is ubiquitous, and almost equally common were echo, amplifier tremolo, and use of the guitar’s vibrato bar. This overall guitar sound is often called a Fender sound, but that is a bit misleading, since Gretsch guitars were equally specialized for the purpose, and many other brands were also used. What makes the twang guitar interesting in topical terms is that it not only signified the western topic but also was key to a linked set of genres that intersect one another in complex ways: western, spy, and surf. Because these were all signified by overlapping musical features and in turn resemble one another in some of their broader connotations, we could speak of a twang guitar continuum: a range of topics that coalesced only shortly before psychedelia and were cognate with it in a variety of ways. Philip Tagg and Bob Clarida point out that the twang guitar, often in a minor mode with a flat seventh, was a common factor between spaghetti western and Bond/spy scores in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I would add surf guitar to the list, with its sonic experimentation and general relationship to fun, escape, and exoticism: “[The twang guitar] probably owes some of its immediate success as a spy sound to its similarity with various pre-rock ‘Viennese intrigue’ sounds like Anton Karas’s Third Man zither licks (1949). But in the 1962–64 period that produced The Virginian (1962), Dr. No (1963) and Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964), steely Fender guitar was well on its way to becoming an all-purpose excitement/adventure timbre” (Tagg and Clarida 2003, 367).

As I write this he’s the guitarist with Ferocious Dog. He stands back and simply plays his guitar and I’ve never seen him happier. I’m clearly way more needy than Les.

The press had missed the real story: that our front man, guitarist and songwriter was beginning to unravel in a serious way. We weren’t oblivious to the fact, but from our point of view Syd was having good days and bad days, and the bad days seemed to be increasing in number.

The guitarist’s name was Dave Mustaine, and the new band he formed was the legendary heavy-metal band Megadeth. Megadeth would go on to sell over 25 million albums and tour the world many times over. Today, Mustaine is considered one of the most brilliant and influential musicians in the history of heavy-metal music.

Jimi Hendrix is the Greatest, Jeff Beck is the Best, but I prefer to listen to Jimmy Page

Come on now, I urged myself, looking at my reflection. Don’t let her ruin this, too. The sight of my red-rimmed eyes made me even more sad and I tried to force a smile, but then my dimples appeared, and they always made me look like her. Or at least back when she used to smile. I hated the way they reminded me of her. I covered them with my index fingers and turned my head sideways, trying to imagine myself without them, wishing I could smooth them out with a touch. If only it were that easy to erase something you didn’t want. I stood pinching the poisonous letter until my breath had calmed and my eyes stopped burning. Then I hurried back to my room and hid it at the bottom of my bag, where I wouldn’t have to think about it any longer. I hadn’t come all this way to keep living this nightmare. In bed, I curled up and tried to focus on the cool breeze that came in through the open window, carrying scents of unfamiliar blossoms and dry grass, and soon I drifted off to the pulsing lullaby of the Midwestern crickets. Ahead lay the road. And the whole world. Two I woke confused, dazzled by a beam of sunlight poking at my eye. Instinctively, I turned around and burrowed my face deeper into the pillow, before I remembered where I was and flew right up. I’m in America! Through the window I could see pastel suburbs and sprawling oak trees, topped by a beckoning blue sky. My head cleared in an instant and I wanted to run outside and explore. But Nathan was still asleep, so instead I padded into the living room and stretched out on the sofa, letting out a gratified exhale. I was free. My eyes drifted over to Nathan’s guitar. I picked it up and ran my fingers over the curved wood. Back home I had a cheap, second-hand acoustic which had served me well in learning the basics. I knew I wasn’t much of a guitarist, but I

last place country music newcomer Maura Whittaker expects to fall in love with a sexy rock guitarist.

The loser,” as TAD guitarist Kurt Danielson explained to the Rocket, “is the existential hero of the Nineties.

As well as myself, there was Paul Swinson, whose father wrote comic songs for the Parlophone label, recorded by the likes of Peter Sellers, and a tall lad whose Mod stylishness was rather spoiled by Hank Marvin-type horn-rimmed spectacles. His name was Stephen Hackett, or Steve Hackett, as he was better known later, when he became famous as a guitarist with Genesis and GTR.

Prometheus, you’ll remember, stole fire from the gods and gave it to the rest of us. That’s what I want to do with guitar instruction and music theory. I want to steal it from the fog of ancient rubrics and the rarified prison of control represented by the academy. I want it liberated from the pulpit and the throne, the pit and the stick . . .

I played guitar when I was a kid. I wanted to be Richie Sambora.” “Who is Richie Sambora?” “Only one of the most prolific guitar players of his time.” He gives me a blank stare. “You know, the guitarist for Bon Jovi.

But her experience on the European tour—the savage reviews she received for singing out of tune, and especially, the memory of the wag in Châteauvallon who, when Paul complained of a nonworking microphone, called out “give it to your missus”—inspired Paul to use the Mellotron as a fail-safe. “What he did was, he had a Mellotron with them with all their vocal harmony parts on it,” explained Brinsley Schwarz guitarist Ian Gomm. “So, you press a key and they go, ‘Ahh.’ On a bad night, he’d look at her and say, ‘Mellotron,’ and she’d mime to the recorded part. The other boys would be happy then, because she was in tune.

As Rick Wakeman put it in the Moog DVD: “As a keyboard player, you could go on and give the guitarist a run for their money.

We were a band,” Seiwell contended. “We’d just done all this touring, we’d knit as a unit, and at the rehearsals in Scotland, everybody was giving their all. So I said to Paul, ‘Can’t we just postpone this for a month? That studio in Lagos will still be ready for you, but let’s first break in a new guitarist, so we can go down and record the album as a band.’ And he said, ‘No, I don’t want to do that. Let’s just go down, and it will be like Ram—we’ll just get the basic tracks and do overdubs.’ That didn’t sit well with me.

He frowned with difficulty at everyone’s quick transition. He felt something crack in the room. It was like the feeling an artist got when he closed up his gallery, walked upstairs to his living quarters, and stared at the window to watch his former crowd rush to party next door and forget his exhibition one martini at a time. It was like goodbye. There was an unsaid, incomprehensive quality of unfairness to endings. They lacked a transition. The guitarist’s identity, for example, was in her strumming ten seconds ago, not when she finished and looked up at the seduced crowd as “her” again. The singer’s heart was housed in his lyrics, not in his thick-accented voice that rooms never understood.

A passive observer to Paul’s working methods during the group’s time recording Wild Life, Alan Parsons noticed a similar pattern developing during sessions for Wings’ second LP, only McCullough was less willing to play sideman than his fellow guitarist. “Denny was very much manipulated by Paul,” noted Parsons, “being told what notes to play. He hadn’t got a lot of freedom, musically. I think Denny had a lot of respect for Paul, but he was like a puppet on a string at that time.

Perhaps because McCartney was principally a guitarist and bassist, and a drummer only when necessary, he was less hands-on with Seiwell. “He never told me what to play, except for one song. I think that’s why he hired me—he didn’t have to tell me. I used to channel Ringo. I’d think, ‘What would Ringo do here?’ And I listened to the way Paul played on the McCartney album. I knew what he liked as a drummer. I would always craft some sort of a part that was going to be down that vein at least. I knew he was going to like it.”22

Jeff Beck was the guitarists guitarist. Class, precision, groove, and technique with an awareness and connection to a song like few have. Jeff Beck arranged and brewed his own combination from the many flavors of the guitar to create a sound and style that was his and his alone.

Inspiration is better than magic, for as any artist will tell you, true inspiration comes not to the lucky or the charmed but to the faithful—to the writer who shows up at her keyboard each morning, even when she’s far too tired, to the guitarist whose fingers bleed after hours of practice, to the dancer who must first learn the traditional steps before she can freestyle with integrity. Inspiration is not about some disembodied ethereal voice dictating words or notes to a catatonic host. It’s a collaborative process, a holy give-and-take, a partnership between Creator and creator.

Herbert Hernandez stands at the intersection of creativity and leadership. He co-founded GIGIL, a premier independent advertising agency that has received top honors such as Philippines Independent Agency of the Year. By day, he leads innovative campaigns and wins awards at prestigious events like Cannes and the APAC Effies. By night, he performs as a guitarist and songwriter for the renowned bands 6cyclemind and Moonstar88, with his song "Migraine" achieving over 100 million streams. Herbert’s 20-year career in advertising has been marked by his ability to blend artistry with business strategy, earning him accolades like a spot on Campaign’s "40 Under 40" list. A creative visionary in both music and marketing, Herbert continues to push boundaries and inspire others with his talent and innovation.

Talking about talents, Jimi Hendrix had talents. Rated the best guitarist that ever lived, he talked to his guitar like a father to a child, reeling off rhythms upon rhythms that continue to haunt his early death.

Trailer parks are full of renegades, runaways, professional clowns, rock band guitarists, down on their luckers, wildlife lovers, 4:00 p.m. cocktailers, book readers, retired couples, single mothers, unicyclers, inventors, patteners, gardeners, dreamers, lost souls, hippies, motorheads, meth cookers, million milers, and iron your own suit at 6:00 a.m.’ers.

Not to mince words Mr. Epstein, we don’t like your boys’ sound. Groups of guitarists are on the way out.