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UNCOVERED: 2 | History Defined

The sacred duty of playing the hits

Founding members of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell, hold the notes of memory

Salon

“Chuck Berry's not a very good guitar player. He's a clown. He runs all over the guitar, just like any one of these old rock players would do, and makes no sense”: Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown pulled no punches when speaking about his fellow guitar heroes

In a 1992 sit-down with GW, the late blues guitar pioneer offered remarkably frank assessments of some of his sacrosanct peers – among them Chuck Berry, B.B. and Freddie King, and T-Bone Walker

Guitar World

“Jimi was staying at a hotel in Times Square. He had his hair set in pink curlers and we would just talk band drama”: Electro-Harmonix founder Mike Matthews on befriending Hendrix, booking Chuck Berry and the birth of pedal culture

The EHX pioneer is one of the guitar world's most colorful characters. He tells us what happened when Hendrix bought one of the first Big Muffs, how the Rolling Stones got him started in the pedal biz, and why the "overdesigned" POG3 is an unlikely triumph

Guitar World

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"The record company should’ve offered counselling - we could've been the next Journey!": The high hopes and shattered dreams of melodic rock's nearly men, Giuffria

When cult rockers Angel broke up, Gregg Giuffria formed another band – and they could have been huge

Louder

'He took us to this place...' Discover what concert Carlos Santana says was the greatest he saw

Carlos Santana says the best concert he ever saw was watching Jimi Hendrix play at the Northern California Folk-Rock Festival at Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in San Jose, California, in 1969, although he readily admits he was high on LSD.

BANG Premier

“If you don’t like Bringing It All Back Home, you don’t like music. You should hand your ears back.” Bob Dylan’s game-changing album is 60 today and still astonishing

Yeah, I said it.

Louder

“Hendrix said, ‘Mike, I gotta quit. I want to form my own band.’” I said, ‘Then you’ve got to sing’”: Why Jimi Hendrix might never have started his solo career if it weren’t for Electro-Harmonix founder Mike Matthews

The pedal guru tells Guitar World he convinced Jimi to go solo, and claims he saw Hendrix recording with a Big Muff

Guitar World

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“If we had tried to plan it, it would’ve never happened. The thing happened just by magic”: From Beatlemania to All Things Must Pass and beyond – the definitive guitar history of George Harrison's greatest recorded works

Guitar World's Beatlemaniacs assemble for the deepest of deep dives into the recorded output of a pop-cultural icon and genius player to find that there was no one quite like George Harrison

Guitar World

“I didn’t have to learn every rhythm and tempo to be at the standard of a studio musician. I learnt what I had to learn and I think I did pretty well": The Monkees' drummer Micky Dolenz says he had the musical chops that his role required

"I was a guitarist and for the audition I played Johnny B Goode by Chuck Berry," he explains

MusicRadar

“It was a fantastic idea. I would have liked a ménage à trois with Brian Jones and his girlfriend”: The Kinks guitarist Dave Davies’ wild tales of Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Led Zeppelin and more

Partying with Keith Moon, jamming with Jerry Lee Lewis, getting into a ménage à trois with Brian Jones –Dave Davies has done it all

Louder

“George asked, ‘Is it OK if I do a little slide?’ I had a ’63 Strat, and that’s what he used. He was one of the best slide players ever”: They flew high with the help of the Beatles, and a few hits, then collapsed in a mess of mismanagement and tragedy

Their story is often cited as one of the saddest in rock, but Badfinger were also one of the sharpest guitar pop acts of their era. Here, the late Joey Molland recounts their roller-coaster ride of a career from his perspective

Guitar World

“The four-chord pattern riff is unoriginal but the dynamic contrasts add to the potency of one of the best guitar riffs of the ’90s”: Nirvana track named the best guitar riff of all time by surprising new study – which leaves out some huge hits

Many of the big hitters feature, but not where you’d expect them to be – and there are some notable absences, too

Guitar World

“People like The Stones, or later on The Kinks. They all really liked us and thought that we had something special": The Liverbirds on life as Britain’s first female rock band

The Liverbirds on life as Britain's first female rock band

MusicRadar

“The combination of music and sex was something I had never encountered in any other group”: How the Rolling Stones married sex, blues and rock’n’roll and launched themselves to notoriety

The story of the exhilarating early ’60s birth of the Rolling Stones

Louder

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"We'd be up for days drinking, getting stoned and making music": How the Rolling Stones channelled chaos to make the final album with their most potent line-up

When Ronnie Wood, the Stones and some A-list mates holed up at his house to help with his solo album, it sparked a days-long party and a Rolling Stones hit

Louder

"I listened to classical music right up until I saw Black Sabbath on TV when I was eight": Michael Monroe picks the records, artists and gigs that mean the most

Hanoi Rocks frontman turned solo star Michael Monroe on living with Stiv Bators and Johnny Thunders, and the possibility that he might never die

Louder

“Jimmy Page allowed Eric to unleash the power he had”: How Eric Clapton helped reinvent the blues with The Bluesbreakers’ landmark Beano album

The epic story of John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers’ 1966 blues rock milestone Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton

Louder

"I knew the MC5 was telling the truth; There were dangerous truths that needed to be revealed": The last stand of rock's great revolutionaries

In 1968 the MC5’s Kick Out The Jams album was a grenade thrown into the music scene. Wayne Kramer acted as guardian of the band’s legacy until he died earlier this year, after making one final album

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Guitar World

“You’re hearing a shredder struggling on 11 flatwound strings trying to solo – I tried to mimic Thin Lizzy and Jurassic Park”: Amyl and the Sniffers are one of the hottest rock bands on the planet – and they got there by breaking punk’s no-solos rule

The fast-rising Australian outfit’s guitarist Declan Martens aims to sound like Angus and Malcolm Young together. He discusses his love of chunky strings, how to make guitar solos punk, and using Dave Grohl’s guitars while recording in the Foo Fighters’ studio

Guitar World

“James Brown kept saying, ‘We’re gonna take it to the bridge.’ Finally, he whipped around and said, ‘Hit me!’ Unfortunately, I did not hit him at all”: Carlos Alomar was fined by the Godfather of Soul, scolded by Chuck Berry – and adored by David Bowie

Playing professionally since his teens, Carlos Alomar was part of the DAM Trio rhythm section that backed David Bowie from the mid-’70s – and now, he says, it’s time to commemorate that legendary collective

Salon

How John and Yoko radicalized daytime TV

Erik Nelson's documentary shows how John Lennon and Yoko Ono transformed daytime TV into a platform for change

Guitar World

“I use a lot of chords with open strings. The guys in the Heartbreakers used to laugh at me, saying, ‘You’re doing the bagpipes again!’” Mike Campbell on his unorthodox guitar style – and how Tom Petty saved his definitive Breakdown lick

With Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits out now, Campbell reflects on a life in music, from first guitars to success with the Heartbreakers and the Dirty Knobs, and lessons learned along the way

Guitar World

“I had the audacity to say, ‘Are we gonna rehearse, Mr. Berry?’ He whipped around and yelled, ‘We don’t rehearse rock ‘n’ roll!’” Session great Carlos Alomar on his time as Chuck Berry’s rhythm guitarist

Alomar also recalls his tour with James Brown and the time the King of Soul yelled ‘Hit me!’ – and he didn’t hit back

Guitar World

His onstage antics inspired Jimi Hendrix to play with his teeth, while his groundbreaking solos influenced B.B. King, Chuck Berry and Albert King: T-Bone Walker changed the course of blues guitar playing – and the role of electric guitar in popular music

The Texan troubadour knew how to give the crowd their money's worth, and players such as Jimi Hendrix were watching. This lesson in his playing style has plenty of biting string bends and blues flavor

Guitar World

“Dirty Deeds… has some more complicated ideas that go up inan Eddie Van Halen kind of way. It reminds me of the kind of things Steve Hackett was doing in 1972”: Black Midi’s Georgie Greep on the high-voltage genius of Angus Young

Black Midi might sound little like AC/DC but as Greep reveals, the influence is there and it is profound, and here breaks down the madcap genius style of rock's evergreen schoolboy

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