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On the cover of their latest record, The Hives Forever Forever the Hives, the Swedish unit are depicted wearing crowns and robes. It’s most likely due to The Hives being garage punk royalty – and one of the few punk bands continuing to carry the torch of proper punk aggro.

In a new interview with The iPaper, frontman Pelle Almqvist argues that modern punk has lost its edge. “A lot of punk is pretty sanitised these days,” he frowns. “I guess Californian punk did that. You have rappers saying they’re making a punk album. It takes more than that to impress me!”

• READ MORE: Five times the Hives were the best band in the world (according to the Hives)

While Almqvist doesn’t namedrop any artists, the phenomenon of rapper-turned-punk rocker is widespread. Machine Gun Kelly (mgk) is one of the biggest names to do so, his 2020 record Ticket To My Downfall notably marking his shift to from hip-hop to pop punk. But there’s also acts like Denzel Curry and Rico Nasty that are melding punk and rap with gusto.

The issue of punk feeling “sanitised” isn’t solely rooted in the sound, however. With more “likeable” punk acts surfacing, it has had an impact on the image of punk overall. In Almqvist’s mind, the watered down punk acts have transformed the genre into something more palatable rather than a parent’s worst nightmare.

If the Hives frontman had it his way, he’d almost prefer for less people to enjoy his music. “My view is maybe I think our music is more extreme than it actually is, because I meet people in the supermarket all the time and they’re like, ‘You guys are the best!’ – I respond like, ‘Oh, you like it?’” he disappointedly admits. “I didn’t know it would be that likeable. Apparently, it is.”

“I was a born contrarian,” Almqvist proudly states, discussing his band’s latest album. “Which was exhausting until we formed the band and I found a place to put all that stuff. Maybe there’s some vague evolutionary advantage to that, but it came at a pretty heavy price.”

In his latest chat with Guitar.com, the frontman asserts that Bad Call is his favourite cut from the latest record. “There are a lot of great riffs on [the new record] – Hooray Hooray Hooray has a great riff, Paint a Picture has a great riff, but I think my favourite is the verse to Bad Call,” he explains. “It’s the drums that are the star in that one, the chords accent the drums and then travel through the song. If it was just the drums, maybe you’d get a bit bored on your journey towards the chorus.”

The post “You have rappers making a punk album. It takes more than that to impress me!”: The Hives frontman calls modern punk “pretty sanitised” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

When it comes to weird and wacky, off-the rails epic guitar solos, it’s hard to beat Billy Duffy’s wildcat lead on the Cult’s 1987 hit Love Removal Machine, from their Rick Rubin-produced album Electric. It’s big and bold in all the ways a rock solo should be, but it zigs where other solos zag. It simply doesn’t behave – there’s a messiness to it in ways that recalls Jimmy Page’s fireball solo to Led Zeppelin’s Heartbreaker.

• READ MORE: Five times the Hives were the best band in the world (according to the Hives)

“I take that as a compliment,” Duffy says. “Most people like it for what it is, but there were a few people who slagged it off.”

He points to one such criticism from a friend, Dweezil Zappa. “It was quite funny, actually,” he says. “We were backstage at some arena, and he went, ‘Dude, that solo is out of tune.’ I said, ‘I know.’ Dweezil was totally floored because he couldn’t comprehend why somebody would try and make a rock ’n’ roll record and not be as concerned with perfection and timing as they were with spirit and attitude.

“I mean, we were making a rock and roll record,” he continues. “We wanted something authentic, and we didn’t get caught up in details. That solo was okay with Rick Rubin, who as far as I know, is the coolest man alive. If Rick was fine with it, I was happy to let it stand.”

Peace Sells?

Originally, Rubin wasn’t tapped to produce the Cult’s follow-up to their breakthrough 1985 album, Love. The band had spent the better part of the summer of 1986 working with producer Steve Brown (who had produced Love) at the Manor Studio in Oxfordshire recording an album to be called Peace that sound-wise (lots of guitar effects, multiple layers of overdubs) didn’t stray from hits like She Sells Sanctuary and Rain.

“The general idea was that Love had been a hit and we became a known band, so logically we didn’t want to completely change course,” Duffy says. “We were just looking to add a bit more muscle to our sound and rock more. We had already done punk rock, which became a bit restrictive, so now it was the mid-‘80s and we thought, ‘Maybe we should explore early Zeppelin.’”

Before sessions with Brown had commenced, however, the band hit a bit of a snag when, as Duffy recalls, singer Ian Astbury, had “a bit of an episode.” “It was sort of a creative crisis that led to a blowout in Italy in which Ian threw out his lyrics,” Duffy says. “We went into the studio without spending much time on the music. Ian wasn’t engaged enough, and we overcompensated with production and layering. There were too many guitars, but that was just how I normally do things. I write melodies by layering guitars.”

Dissatisfied with the results, the band decided to contact the New York-based Rubin, who had already established himself as a shining star by combining rock and hip-hop on hits by the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC (particularly their rock-rap mash-up Walk This Way with Aerosmith), and have him remix Love Removal Machine, which had already been viewed as a potential single.

Idle Hands

Rubin made his feelings known to the band in no uncertain terms. “He thought what we recorded was too busy,” Duffy says, “Although his actual words were less PC. He thought it was too messy and complicated. It didn’t hit hard enough for him. He wanted something simple and direct.”

Before remixing Love Removal Machine, however, Rubin made the proviso that he would do so only if he and the band would recut a song they liked the least on the record, Peace Dog. After doing so, the decision was quickly made to toss away all existing tracks and redo everything, with Rubin producing the band as he saw fit.

“Rick talked about AC/DC, Zeppelin and a little bit about Aerosmith,” Duffy says. “He asked, ‘Do you like those records?’ and we said, ‘Hell yeah.’ I saw AC/DC when Bon Scott was in the band, so I was very much on board. At that point, we were open to somebody who had a different vision. We weren’t precious about things at all. Rick made a lot of sense to us, and he took us on a bit of a journey. He later said something once that I quite liked – that he didn’t so much produce the Cult as he reduced us. In that way, Electric is sort of an outlier for me.”

The band traveled to New York to work with Rick. You recorded at Electric Lady Studios.

“Right. We were in the big studio downstairs – in the back of my mind, it’s where AC/DC did Back in Black. Rick had a great team – Andy Wallace was the engineer, and George Drakoulias was there. Rick had the vision.”

Rick hadn’t yet worked with a lot of full bands.

“This might have been before he produced Slayer – I’m not sure. He was very confident, but in a nice way. He believed in what he felt. He believed in the band. He got us.”

As a guitar player who had established a sound, was it hard for you to give in to Rick’s approach and let go of your effects?

“Sure. It was quite a shock. I don’t think anybody else realized or cared that I was literally flying by the seat of my pants. I was reaching back to being a teenage boy, pre-punk, listening to Mott the Hoople and Bad Company and Led Zeppelin, et cetera, et cetera. The other thing was, all the gear on Electric was rented – every stick of it.”

Before you did any recording, even for what was supposed to be the Peace album, did you play any of the material live, just to test it out?

“That’s a very good question, and I don’t think we did. No, wait – we played one song called Electric Ocean because we tried to cut it for a movie soundtrack. I know there’s a live version of it from a festival in Finland. But Love Removal, none of that was played live.

Set the scene in the studio. Rick tells the band, ‘Great song, but you’re doing too much. We’re gonna take it down to bare bones.’ Did he get you all there to rehearse as a band to make the song lean and mean?”

“Absolutely. Originally, it was three guys in the room – Ian wasn’t there because he didn’t sing with us when we were doing the backing tracks. But I remember Rick telling him, “You’re the singer, right? Go and sing!” Ian jumped in and we cut every track from the floor. Which was great because the singer is part of a team. The vocals are essential. If you’re taking away all of these guitar layers, you won’t be left with much if you don’t have any singing.”

As you mentioned, the gear was rented. That included your guitars?

“Yeah. There’s no Gretsch guitar on the song or the album, which will break everybody’s hearts. I used two rented Les Pauls.”

Your go-to guitar had been a Gretsch White Falcon. Did you feel naked without it?

“Absolutely. It was scary at first. Now, I should say that prior to the Cult, I had played Les Pauls. I got into Gretsches around 1981. So I’m playing Les Pauls through rented Marshalls – no delay or chorus or echo. I was used to having an overdriven sound, because the more saturation you have, the easier it is to play. Rick and Andy had this thing where they backed off the overdrive, and I was panicking a bit, but they found that if you backed off the gain, the amp sound became bigger. It was that sweet spot.”

Let’s get into that solo. Did you plot it out beforehand, or was it spontaneous?

“I’m a gut guy. I’ve always felt my role as a guitar player would be to serve the song, and playing a good guitar solo is part of that service. Because I had a punk rock background, I didn’t like perfection. I wanted soul, passion and guts.”

You start the solo out on this crying, sustained note. Did you at least have that planned?

“My thing with a guitar solo is, you need to know how you’re going to get in and how you’re going to get out. What happens in the middle isn’t quite as important. I did have the idea to start the solo because of a song called Violence by Mott the Hoople. There’s a break where Mick Ralphs hits a note with a wah-wah and he sustains the note while the music moved around it. I just always felt that the more you can say with the less notes, the better. There’s time to do a lot, and in some spots I went a bit mad. I was just trying to help out and do my job. It wasn’t like, ‘Hey, look at me!’”

Even so, it is a very “look at me” guitar solo.

“Well, it’s set up that way. It’s presented on a platter, isn’t it? It’s a bit of a pig with an apple in its mouth. Rick had us reconstruct the songs, and that was part of it – you needed the payoff.”

Did you play the solo live with the rest of the band?

“I honestly can’t remember how I did it. I don’t know whether I would’ve done a solo without rhythm guitar, if you know what I mean, because it would’ve just been drums and bass. It’s likely that I did it as an overdub. But the solos on that record were not really chopped together.”

The middle part of the solo – the part that Dweezil Zappa said was out of tune – it’s completely mad. It’s great, but it’s totally weird. What was running through your mind as you played it?

“I can’t recall. I wasn’t as caught up in the detail because it was a bit of a rush job. There was a lot of pressure because we knew we’d eaten up all the budget and we were on borrowed time. So my mindset was more like, ‘If everybody else is into it, I’m into it.’”

Toward the end of the song, the band goes into a full-tilt boogie and you do another solo – more of a spitfire run. None of that was on the earlier version you had cut.

“I think what had happened was, we were a live touring band and we were looking for a song to be a set ender, something quite dramatic. It was just one of those crazy “go for it” rock and roll solos. I always felt it was in the spirit of Toys in the Attic – this explosion of energy.”

After you had finished cutting everything and you listened to a playback with Rick, what were you thinking? After all, this was a pretty stark difference in the band’s sound.

“I was a little nervous. I was aware that it was certainly going to upset a bit of a gothic apple cart. But Ian was totally committed, while in the back of my mind it was like, ‘Wow, this is going to really upset people.’ With She Sells Sanctuary, I intuitively knew it was the right thing to do.”

“People are like, ‘Why don’t you make an album like that again?’ Well, because we’re not 25 anymore, living this young man’s pirate lifestyle. Electric is kind of a cartoon album of our lifestyle at that time, and it’s very important in that context. We were naive and having a lot of fun misbehaving. It was the soundtrack to sort of a misspent youth.”

There was Dweezil Zappa’s reaction, but as you said, you’ve heard the opposite from a lot of people.

“The general reaction to the Electric album is, it’s sort of a timeless rock sound. Warts and all, it’s honest. It’s a few blokes playing to their best of ability without a lot of smoke and mirrors. From Rick all the way down to the band and everyone involved, we put the hours in. We believed that good, honest rock had gotten a bit of trodden under foot with punk rock. We just believed in what we were doing.”

We should talk about the riff to Love Removal Machine. At any point, did anybody in the band say, “Oh, shit, this sounds a bit like Start Me Up”?

“No. That’s a very interesting question because it’s kind of haunted the track. Hand over heart, I never thought it was influenced by that at all. Now, does it sound like it? Well, yeah, I can see that. I didn’t know it the time. I know the version that I wrote didn’t sound like it. It wasn’t intentional.

“I don’t know where it came from. It certainly didn’t come from me owning an album with Start Me Up on it. I’ve never really owned a Stones album – I know that might horrify people. But they did write one of my favourite songs ever, Gimme Shelter. I was just never a Stonesy guy.”

The post “I didn’t try to play a guitar hero solo, but it sounds like it” The Cult’s Billy Duffy reveals his ultimate guitar solo appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The aches and pains of ageing are unavoidable – but that doesn’t mean you have to quit performing. Jake E Lee is the latest musician to admit his arthritis has impacted his chops, but he’s determined to keep playing.

In a new interview with Guitar World, the former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist admits that his arthritis has gotten worse. “The cartilage is basically gone,” he explains. “I can’t feel it; it’s bone on bone… The only operation they had available was to fuse the bones together. My wrist would be pretty much locked in. I didn’t want that.”

However, he’s learning to adapt his playing style to “keep the wrist movement down to a minimum”. His approach has been focusing on the elbow; “I’ve had to adjust my playing style to where I’m using mostly the elbow on the right hand, trying to use as much elbow movement as I can.”

• READ MORE: “It was like juggling chainsaws while being on a skateboard”: Zakk Wylde on the pressures of playing with Ozzy Osbourne at Black Sabbath’s final gig

“It’s made it interesting,” he continues. “In a way, it’s like learning to play guitar again, even though I know how to play it. I’m having fun. Mentally – and as far as theory – I know exactly what to do, but I have to teach my left and right hands to accommodate me.”

To aid his new style, Lee has also switched to slightly lighter plectrums and strings. “I usually use a heavy pick, but I went to a lighter one,” he says. “It forced me to have a lighter touch with my right hand, and that’s been interesting. My left hand is also a little bit weak, so lately I’ve been playing with seven [gauge strings] to force myself to have a lighter touch.”

“And it’s interesting because Billy Gibbons uses sevens, and that’s what Tony Iommi and Brian May use,” he adds. “They don’t have a problem with getting a good tone!”

While Lee is learning to adjust to his arthritis, it has limited him from tackling some of his tougher riffs. At Black Sabbath’s Back To The Beginning show, he was unable to play guitar on Bark At The Moon, instead allowing Travis Barker, Nuno Bettencourt, Vernon Reid, Rudy Sarzo and Adam Wakeman handle the track with Tobias Forge on vocal duties.

“I know people are expecting Bark at the Moon, but I don’t know,” he told Guitar World in the lead up to the gig. “Right now, with my wrist, the arthritis and everything, that would be very challenging. I have a couple of months to get up to it, so I’ll practice it just in case. But that’s going to be pretty challenging for me physically.”

Right now, however, Lee is just focusing on improving his new approach to guitar. “It’s a lot of strengthening, stretching, and steroid shots,” he says.

He also notes that it’s hardly the worst pain he’s had to deal with in his life – hell, he was shot in the arm three times last year while walking his dog. “I’ve had back issues forever, and wrist pain isn’t anything compared to that,” he insists.

The post “I can’t feel it. It’s bone on bone”: Jake E Lee admits arthritis struggles have caused him to totally “relearn” how to play guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

From Jane’s Addiction to Metallica, Lollapalooza has had some iconic rock acts fronting it over the years. However, the last decade has seen a shift towards rappers and popstars, with the 2025 lineup only having one single rock-adjacent headliner in the form of Korn.

So why has Lollapalooza turned its attention away from rock music? In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore insists it’s because society just doesn’t care about rock music any more. “This is the advent of the single popstar surrounded by production, whether it’s dancers and lights and films and stage sets,” he says. “It’s become very sort of Disneyfied, in a way, and it caters to mass popularity in a way Disneyland does.”

• READ MORE: The Beths Pick Their Five Most Honest Guitar Records Of All Time

The focus is on what’s the most ‘entertaining’ to the average, mainstream music consumer. It’s easier to sell tickets if the line-up is less niche and more broad. Moore notes how the festival is more of a mixed bag nowadays, catering to “the core rock & roll audience that would see Led Zeppelin or Pearl Jam” as well as “people who aren’t that invested in rock music at all, but are invested in entertainment as a broader kind of concept”.

“It has a broader appeal than, say, the standardised rock band,” he notes. “There are still rock bands, but they’re not just playing Lollapalooza.”

He also notes that, right now, rock bands “aren’t the success stories they once were”. Of course, society’s fascination with rock music comes and goes; Beatlemania saw a spike in rock ‘n’ roll buzz, while the early 2000s saw the likes of Linkin Park topping the charts.

Right now, the masses are just loving pop – which, according to Moore, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “I think all of those musicians are completely credible,” he notes. “Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan are great artists.”

“I just went to see Lana Del Rey, and it was kind of amazing!” he adds. “There was a stage set of a farmhouse, and she was walking in and around it and had dancers everywhere… It was something to see. I liked it. I like her music, and I like what she’s up to aesthetically.”

The mass success of pop acts isn’t negative, either – in fact, Roan and Rodrigo are great role models. “It’s not just crass entertainment,” Moore says. “More power to them. It’s not really my kind of music. And I certainly don’t strive for that kind of mass acceptance at all. I know it would be great for my pocketbook, but other than that…”

However, Moore does believe that the pendulum will swing back. While high-production pop is ‘in’ right now, audiences will soon be craving some gritty and organic. “My predilection is to hear music in a much more intimate setting,” he says. “I like seeing the interaction between musicians that’s very organic. You know, a musician playing guitar that’s plugged into an amp…”

And, of course, underground scenes are still thriving. “There’s still a demographic of young people interested in experimental rock music and anything that comes out of punk culture,” he says. “It’s not Olivia Rodrigo huge… To me, it was always cooler to have a modest kind of existence in that respect.”

While underground scenes might not be given their flowers on the big stages, he does note that a smaller scale of success is sometimes what suits rock ‘n’ roll best. “The big business of rock & roll was a bit of a conflict for somebody like Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain to all of a sudden be in a band that was so massive,” he reflects. “He dealt with it in his own way, and then he didn’t deal with it in his own way.”

Last year, Moore surprised Sonic Youth fans by reuniting with his former bandmates Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley for an hour of improvised music at the New York club The Stone. However, there isn’t any serious Sonic Youth ‘reunion’ on the cards. “That was about as much of a reunion as us having dinner together or something,” he laughs.

Outside of his musical work, Moore is also working on his debut novel. Rolling Stone reports that the book is set in the early ‘80s and will navigate the New York music scene. “It’s characters and incidents I certainly felt like I could write about,” he explains.

The post “It caters to mass popularity in a way Disneyland does”: Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore on why major festivals like Lollapalooza have abandoned rock bands appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

After decades of leather, eyeliner, and world tours, Nikki Sixx has decided being a rock star isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Mötley Crüe bassist recently took to social media to share his outlook on the future, including how the whole rock star schtick is now “overrated”.

• READ MORE: “Are you crazy? You’re a rock star”: Ozzy Osbourne’s baffled reaction when Randy Rhoads told him he was going to quit his band shortly before his death

“Looking forward to these 10 shows with Motley but also extremely excited about all the other projects I have planned for the future not involving being in a band,” Sixx reportedly wrote, according to Ultimate Classic Rock.

The 66-year-old explained that while he still loves performing the band’s catalogue, his priorities have shifted.

“Love playing the songs and honestly most of them are very personal to me but being on the road is not for me for too much longer,” Sixx said. “I have a six-year-old girl to raise and five wonderful older kids and a granddaughter to spend time with.”

The ten shows Sixx referred to are Mötley Crüe’s rescheduled Las Vegas residency, originally slated for March and April this year but pushed back so singer Vince Neil could recover from a medical procedure. The new dates will now run between September to October at Dolby Live at Park MGM.

But while the Crüe still have plenty of unfinished business, Sixx insists the road is no longer central to his life.

“The good news is all these new projects all involve music,” he wrote. “Music will always be my life but the road is old. Being a rockstar is overrated. Being a creative is where it’s at. The future is exciting and the past was a blast.”

Speaking of the past, Mötley Crüe’s upcoming compilation album From the Beginning is scheduled for release on 12 September. The record features a selection of the band’s biggest hits, plus a fresh remix of their 1985 classic Home Sweet Home featuring Dolly Parton.

Check out the full list of rescheduled Las Vegas residency dates at the Mötley Crüe website.

The post “Music will always be my life but the road is old”: Nikki Sixx thinks being a rock star is “overrated” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Chris Holmes knows exactly where he stands in the Eddie Van Halen versus Randy Rhoads debate, and it’s certainly not on the fence.

The former W.A.S.P. guitarist has been accused of having beef with Rhoads – who came up with Quiet Riot in the same LA metal scene in the 70s and 80s – sets the record straight in a new interview, making it clear that while he doesn’t “hate” him, Van Halen will always come out on top in his book.

• READ MORE: “Are you crazy? You’re a rock star”: Ozzy Osbourne’s baffled reaction when Randy Rhoads told him he was going to quit his band shortly before his death

Speaking with The Metal Voice, Holmes addresses rumours that he disliked the late Ozzy Osbourne guitarist [via Blabbermouth]: “There’s a lot of people [who] say that I hate Randy Rhoads. No, I don’t hate the guy. I like the guy, actually,” he says.

“I think he is a good guitar player. I’ve read on the Internet, a lot of people say I hate him. I don’t hate him. Okay?! He comes from my era, from my age of playing guitar and stuff. I’ve never said I hate the guy.”

Holmes explains that his preference simply comes down to growing up with Van Halen and the energy that Eddie brought to the guitar.

“I grew up with Van Halen,” he says, “so I look at him, who’s better? To me, Van Halen smokes him. So if I go with the Van Halen side of [things]. Van Halen didn’t wear a little bow tie and polka dots. Quiet Riot did. I didn’t like that.”

“I’d rather go to a Van Halen party, drink Schlitz malt liquor and get your teeth knocked out in the mud than go to a Quiet Riot party and smoke Sherman cigarettes and drink Perrier. That ain’t my bag,” Holmes continues. “So it’s different sides of [things].”

“But anyway, yeah, I don’t hate Randy Rhoads. He’s played some good stuff. It’s sad that he died.”

Watch the full interview below.

The post “I’d rather go to a Van Halen party, drink Schlitz malt liquor and get your teeth knocked out”: W.A.S.P guitarist on why he prefers Eddie Van Halen to Randy Rhoads appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$449/£445, walrusaudio.com

It’s quite possible that people will come to know the Walrus Audio Qi Etherealizer as ‘the Yvette Young pedal’. Especially people who don’t know how to pronounce ‘Qi’. But let’s make one thing clear: this is not an artist signature product.

• READ MORE: DigiTech HammerOn review – will this ‘instantaneous pitch shifter’ hit the nail on the head for enhanced creative playing?

With her band Covet, Young has become known for her intricately melodic and fluid playing, high on clarity and low on atmospheric excesses. Which means the Qi – combining chorus, delay and reverb with grain-based glitch effects and epic stereo soundscaping – is pretty much the opposite of anything you might call her signature sound.

Okay, so let’s just go along with Walrus and call it a ‘collaborative creation’. But that still leaves the question of why the Yvette Young pedal doesn’t sound like, well Yvette Young?

Walrus Audio Qi Etherealizer – what is it?

The best person to explain this contradiction is surely Young herself – which she did back in January when m’colleague Josh Gardner collared her at the NAMM Show, where the Qi (it’s pronounced ‘chee’, by the way!) was launched.

“My overall vision for the pedal was to have something that was an idea generator, an instant vibe,” she said. “I’ve been doing a lot more producing and film-scoring stuff, so I got interested in abstraction. As guitar players, I think we all go through things where it’s like, ‘Oh well, I have my style, I play my riffs…’ I needed something that pushed me and challenged me creatively. And I feel like the granular stuff pushes me in an abstract direction and makes me think in a more painterly way with sound.”

It’s not all about leftfield larks: the reverb and chorus are straightforward enough, while the delay is a simple digital type with no modulation or filtering. But the grain effect is properly radical; there are multiple options for holding down a footswitch to create sustaining beds of sound, and all of this happens in full stereo. Technical math-rockers, brace yourselves: things are about to get bigly ambient.

Tell you what, though… this pedal comes in two finishes: plain black, and a sort of fudgy hue with what appears to be a freshly electrocuted corpse on it. Seeing as Young’s two signature Ibanez guitars come in vibrantly sparkly green or orange, I think we’re allowed to be a teeny bit disappointed with those options.

Walrus Audio Qi Etherealizer – in use

First of all, is it easy to turn the individual effects on and off with your feet? No, it is not. In fact it’s virtually impossible – holding down a little push-button is the only option for manual bypass – so bear that in mind if you were thinking of using the Qi as a conventional multi-effects stomper. Actually, there’s so much twiddlability in this 12-knob unit that, unless you enjoy playing the guitar while hunched over like William Blake’s Newton, you might want to consider popping it up on a desk.

And what are those 12 knobs? They’re best understood as four separate columns, each controlling one effect. So, starting on the right, the chorus has mix, rate and depth then the aforementioned push-button, which also lets you switch between tri-chorus and stereo modes; the delay has mix, time and feedback then three time-division options on the button; and the grain has mix, ‘X’ (basically the length of the chopped-up sound slices) and a five-way switch for playback speed, while the button flips between two modes: ‘grain cloud’ (for short glitchy repeats) and ‘phrase sample’ (for longer randomised loop effects).

Same kind of deal with the reverb, then? Not quite – the left column has just a single ‘space’ control for that, and the others are for the pedal’s overall output: wet/dry mix, wet tone, and a button for series or parallel routing.

Now we come to the footswitches… and it’s good news for people with three legs, because there’s a lot going on here. On the left is the master bypass switch, but you can also hit this and the middle one together to scroll through three presets plus manual mode. The right switch is for tap tempo but you can also hold it down to ramp up the delay to maximum feedback; hold down the centre switch to do the same with the reverb, or bop it once to freeze the grain effect.

Can you have the delay, reverb and grain all maxed out at once? Yes. Does this sound vast, spectacular, mystical, magical and potentially hallucinogenic? Also yes. But that’s far from the whole story.

Walrus Audio Qi Etherealizer – sounds

You know when you buy a digital pedal and it comes with 200 presets and 196 of them sound like crap? When I am World King, this will be banned. Or maybe just tariffed at 75 per cent, I haven’t decided yet. Anyway, it won’t be a problem for the Qi, because there are only three factory presets (created by Young herself) and they cover the basics very well.

So that’s probably a good place to get started if you’re new to this sort of thing, but for the purposes of this review the first step is to jump straight into manual mode – helpfully indicated by a white LED – for a methodical exploration of each effect.

The chorus gets things off to an extremely promising start, with a sweetly wobbly core sound and lots of flexibility from those three knobs as well as the welcome bonus of the mode button. The stereo effect is suitably luscious, but in a mono setup you might just find the tri-chorus more appealing.

The delay hardly needs discussing, as it’s completely straight and unfiltered unless you choose to attack it with the master tone control – more on that in a sec – while the grain effect is suspiciously similar to the new algorithm on the Walrus Mako Series MkII D1 delay, with the same five options: standard, octave up, octave down, reverse and random (which hops freely between the other four). As on the D1, it’s all quirky but clean and loads of fun.

Finally, the reverb leans towards hugeness and has a tendency to eat everything you put in front of it – even at halfway it will mush out fairly strong delay repeats. Well, this is an ‘Etherealizer’ after all… even so, in the name of balance it’s good to have the parallel option, whereby the four effects are processed separately then summed together at the end.

But the best part of this section of the Qi is the tone knob. It might not look like much, but this is a synth-style resonant low-pass filter with a whole lot of sound-shaping muscle. It’s best left fully open to start with, then yanked down for dramatic shifts in and out of darkness – particularly effective when you want to add some movement to an endlessly looping ambience. Speaking of which… let’s start freezing stuff.

Hold down the tap footswitch and the delay takes a few seconds to properly snowball, which it does in a nicely saturated way; it won’t soar and swoop like an analogue type when you start messing with the time knob, but it will make some interesting thwocky noises.

Freezing the grain has a quite different effect, instantly creating a hypnotic loop of pure texture, while maxing out the reverb takes the edge off the granular glitching and turns that loop into a galaxy-sized stereo wash. As a shortcut to ambient nirvana it feels, if anything, too easy – am I still a musician here, or just the pedal’s supervisor? – but where the Qi really excels is in the freedom it gives you to set up a bed of sound and then play around with it.

I mentioned the power of the tone knob earlier; you can also change the grain speed (try going from double to reverse then back again!) and even flip between ‘cloud’ and ‘sample’ modes. Every move adds a new evolution to the soundscape, and brings the kind of unpredictability that might just save you from pseudo-spiritual self-indulgence.

Walrus Audio Qi Etherealizer – should I buy it?

In the nicest possible way, this feels more like a toy than a tool. Set up in stereo with a good pair of amps, or a two-channel preamp and headphones, it will eat up whole days of your life as you find yourself creating magical realms of rolling sonic wonder just by picking a few notes and tweaking a few knobs. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a pedal that does this so well, especially in terms of the ability to modify and layer soundscapes once they’re already in flight.

The only caveat, of course, is whether anyone else will ever want to hear these semi-automated creations. I think the answer to that comes down to how you use the Qi – that is, preferably in moderation. The four effects all sound great in normal operating mode, so there’s plenty to explore here without always jumping straight into lushness overload. Please bliss out responsibly.

Walrus Audio Qi Etherealizer alternatives

Is this a multi-effects pedal or an ambient soundscape generator? It’s somewhere between the two, in a zone where you’ll also find the Hologram Chroma Console ($399). For pure brain-swamping reverb you won’t find better than the Old Blood Noise Endeavors Dark Star Stereo ($299/£299).

The post Walrus Audio Qi Etherealizer review – chorus, delay, reverb and glitchy ambient soundscapes all in one pedal appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Former Machine Head and Vio-lence guitarist Phil Demmel has partnered with Jackson on a new Polka Dot-finished signature King V model, which pays tribute to the first-ever Jackson guitar he owned.

That guitar – an early Randy Rhoads signature model – was acquired via some “sketchy means”, as he explains.

• READ MORE: PRS SE NF 53 review: “it might look like PRS’s Telecaster, but this is its own guitar”

“It was the Randy model, the first Randy Rhoads model, the white one, and there was one available,” Demmel recalls. “We did a trade, but evidently he owed some money or something.

“So I ended up [playing a] sold-out show in Oakland [with] Vio-lence. I get called off the stage, and the guy whose guitar it was had the cops pull me off and get his guitar back.”

He goes on: “My dad, who was a cop back in the day, came up to see what had happened. The kid got his guitar back, they let me go, the band is already playing without me, they don’t care. I stage dive, get back on, grab a guitar and finish the set.”

While Demmel lost possession of that white Randy Rhoads model, he later acquired another, the RR1 in black, which he says he still owns to this day. I’ll never forget my first Jackson,” he says.

As for the specs of his new Jackson signature model – the Phil Demmel KV King V – the guitar features a mahogany body with a three-piece through-body maple neck with graphite reinforcement, a 12”-16” compound radius ebony fingerboard with 24 jumbo frets, a Floyd Rose double-locking bridge and a set of EMG 81/60 humbuckers.

Other features include pearloid sharkfin inlays and a black-and-white Polka Dot finish which wraps the entirety of the body including the neck and headstock.

“I’ve always been a King V guy,” Demmel says. “The departure into the Fury was something super cool. Creating the tribute to Randy Rhoads with the polka dots back in 2009 was something special, so it’s nice to be able to pay homage with this limited series to share that with everybody.”

The Phil Demmel KV King V has an MSRP of £1,499. For more information, head to Jackson.

The post Phil Demmel’s first-ever Jackson guitar has a hell of a backstory – and he’s just honoured it with a Polka Dot King V signature model appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Even before his 1967 debut, Jimi Hendrix was already stunning crowds across the globe. In fact, when Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour caught Hendrix performing in East London club Blaises in ‘66, he knew Hendrix was destined for greatness.

In a new interview with Rick Beato, Gilmour recalls walking into South Kensington club Blaises one fateful evening – when a significant number of high-profile rocker were in attendance. “One night, I went in there, and it was rammed with people,” he says. “All the Beatles and all the Stones were there. I thought, ‘This is a bit unusual…’”

Of course, everyone was there to catch Hendrix, the hopeful American newcomer who was starting to cause a stir overseas. Gilmour, however, had no clue what to expect. “A kid came in with a guitar case, got up on the stage, opened his guitar case and put [his guitar] on the wrong way round,” he says. “He plugged into an amp and started… The entire place’s jaws just dropped. It was absolutely extraordinary!”

• READ MORE: “It was a bit of a disaster”: Why John McLaughlin had to use a cheap acoustic during a jam with Jimi Hendrix

Don’t just take Gilmour’s word for it; journalist Chris Welch was also there on the same evening, and he gave Hendrix a dazzling review in Melody Maker magazine. “The fantastic American guitarist blew the minds of the star-packed crowd”, he wrote [via Classic Rock]. “Hendrix has great stage presence and an exceptional guitar technique which involved playing with his teeth on occasion and no hands on others.”

The impact of the Blaises set left a mark on Gilmour; he knew that Hendrix was a very special talent. Hooked, the Pink Floyd legend went hunting for more of Hendrix’s work – but, unfortunately, he was a year too early to find Hendrix’s Are You Experienced debut in stores. “I went out the next day trying to find records by this character, Jimi Hendrix,” he explains to Beato. “He didn’t exist.”

This would mark the beginning of Gilmour’s patient wait for a Hendrix debut. Speaking to BBC Radio 2’s Tracks Of My Years back in 2006, he also recalled his wild goose chase trying to get his hands on more Hendrix content back in ‘66. “I went to record shops and I said ‘You got anything by this guy Jimi Hendrix?’, and they said ‘Well, we’ve got a James Hendrix?’” he laughed [transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage].

“He hadn’t yet done anything!” he said. “So I became rather an avid fan waiting for his first release.”

Thankfully, he only had to wait one year. When Hendrix finally did unleash his music onto the world, Gilmour was first in line, telling Beato: “As soon as it came along, I thought, ‘Yes, Jimi!! I want a slice of that.’”

Gilmour was such a fan that he would do anything to work alongside Hendrix. While the pair never released any music together, Gilmour helped mix Hendrix’s set at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. “Not a lot of people know that,” Gilmour told Prog back in 2019. “[I was working] side stage with WEM Audiomasters with Charlie Watkins.”

“I went down to go to it and I was camping in a tent, just being a punter,” he continued. “[The sound team] were very nervous, because they were going to have to mix Hendrix’s sound. I did some mixing stuff in those days and they said ‘Help! Help!’ So I did.”

The post “He plugged into an amp and the entire place’s jaws just dropped”: David Gilmour recounts the first time he saw Jimi Hendrix performing in a tiny East London venue appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Atlanta police say Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds was at fault for the crash which took his life on 20 August, after he was found to have been travelling between 63 and 68 mph at the time, around twice the speed limit in the area, according to Atlanta News First. 

A police report released shortly after the accident noted how the driver of an SUV failed to yield while making a turn at an Atlanta intersection, leading to a collision with Hinds, who was riding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

• READ MORE: “A bottle rocket of creative spirit” and a “motherf**ker on six strings”: The guitar world pays tribute to Mastodon’s Brent Hinds

A responding officer said Hinds was “breathing and moving with visible injuries to his head, arms and torso”, but was later transported to Grady Memorial Hospital, “where he perished from his injuries”.

In a new police report, investigators say that Hinds was “at fault for the crash” due to his excessive speed. Using video footage of the intersection, investigators estimated that the guitarist was travelling between 63 and 68 mph, roughly twice the speed limit at the intersection. “Hinds was at fault for the crash,” police say.

In a previous report uploaded online, the Atlanta Police Department said the driver of the SUV which collided with Hinds’ motorcycle remained at the scene and spoke with investigators. 

She said she was “positive the light was green” as she proceeded, however a witness claimed her light was red. The same witness and another both said Hinds was “driving fast” at the time of the crash.

As a founding guitarist of Mastodon, Brent Hinds remained a member of the band for 25 years since its formation in 2000, until his departure earlier this year. While the split initially looked to be amicable, Hinds later came out with some criticisms of his former bandmates, even going as far as to call them “horrible humans” and “incapable of singing in key”.

Hinds’ sudden and tragic death rocked the guitar and wider music world, with his former bandmates saying they were in a “state of unfathomable sadness and grief”.

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At their first concert following his death, Mastodon noted how their relationship with Brent Hinds was “not always perfect, but we were brothers till the end”.

Tributes to Hinds also came from Opeth, Slash, Zakk Wylde, Trivium’s Matt Heafy and many others.

The post Police say Brent Hinds “at fault” for crash which took his life – as he is found to have been travelling twice the speed limit appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ad Feature with Sweetwater

September is Guitar Month at Sweetwater! Until the end of the month, there are some serious savings to be found on electrics, acoustics, basses, pedals and amps. Plus, alongside the big deals, there’s also some cool new and exclusive gear landing, and some special financing offers available. We’ve picked out five of the coolest discounts you can find at Sweetwater this Guitar Month, with hundreds of dollars to be saved on some great pieces of kit.

$500 off a Guild Starfire III Hollowbody Electric Guitar

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Looking for your next jazz hollowbody or wanting to do a rockabilly deep-dive? You can’t go wrong with a Guild hollowbody for either. The Starfire III is a really cool combination of old-school style with some modern design tweaks – the LB-1 “Little Bucker” humbuckers provide a focused sound, just as ready for some warm, jazzy cleans as they are for fire-breathing rock and roll – plus the thinner hollow body will handle higher volume a little better than a full-sized jazz box. There’s also a Bigsby-style vibrato if you need a little wobble.

For guitar month it’s also almost half off. There’s a huge saving of $500, with the price slashed down to $699 from $1,199. For such a premium instrument, that’s a fantastic saving.

$600 off a Gibson Les Paul Standard ’60s Plain Top Electric Guitar in Sparkling Burgundy

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The Gibson Les Paul Standard – one of the most iconic guitar designs ever, of course, with all the Les Paul trimmings you might expect from a USA-made Gibson. There’s a mahogany body with a maple top and a slim-taper mahogany neck, as well as two ‘60s Burstbucker pickups for some authentic PAF tones. A little less authentic – but all the better for it – is the absolutely gorgeous Sparkling Burgundy finish

And this Guitar Month, a USA-made Gibson doesn’t have to totally break the bank – this guitar is down from $2,599 to $1,999, a generous saving of $600.

$500 off a Heritage Standard H-535 Semi-hollowbody Electric Guitar

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Don’t fancy a hollow guitar or a solid-body? Why not split the difference! The H-535 is a take on the classic double-cut semi-hollow electric, drawing on Heritage’s Kalamazoo DNA. The guitar comes finished in a gorgeous Original Sunburst – it’s also a thin nitrocellulose that’ll age and wear just like a 60s guitar.

It also comes loaded with a set of Seymour Duncan ‘59 Humbuckers – these are prized for the PAF impression, capturing the touch sensitivity and transparency of Seth Lover’s 1955 design.

For Guitar Month, there’s a huge saving of $500 – down to $1,999 from $2,499, saving $500.

$800 off a Breedlove Oregon Concert CE

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This beautiful and unique acoustic from Breedlove is made with solid myrtlewood, a unique tonewood native to the Pacific northwest. The sound is described as a blend of the maple, rosewood and mahogany, with a balanced character

Alongside this unique acoustic sound there’s also the fantastic LR Baggs Element system to provide a realistic translation of the guitar’s character on stage or when recording direct.

All of these premium features are at less of a premium this guitar month, too, with a discount of $800 from its usual price of $2,799 – grabbing a guitar like this for just under $2,000 is not to be sniffed at!

$484 off a Victory Amplification V40 The Duchess

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The Victory Duchess splits the difference between what we know and love from both the British and American approaches to tube amp voicing. While it has just a single channel, there’s an awesome Voice switch to leap across the Atlantic for bright and restrained US sounds or midrangey, chaotic British sounds.

Plus your sound on stage will thank you – 40 watts of tube power is more than enough to keep up with even the most aggressive of drummers, and a midrange-push switch will let your overdriven tones stand out amidst a mix.

For Guitar Month, The Duchess has been placed in an entirely different price category – it’s reduced by $484, down to $945 from $1,429.14

The post It’s Guitar Month at Sweetwater! Here are the five best deals from the event appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$979/£979, prsguitars.com

Paul Reed Smith hasn’t got to where he is today by being afraid of ruffling a few feathers. The Maryland guitar maker’s success over the last 40 years has been built on finding new and innovative ways to evolve the electric guitar while always being inspired by its iconic heritage.

• READ MORE: Five times the Hives were the best band in the world (according to the Hives)
  

Sometimes it’s meant that PRS has attracted its fair share of criticism – remember the outcry when the Silver Sky was first launched? Well, now the ‘PRS Strat’ regularly outsells its inspiration, and the naysayers have gone very quiet.

It was a very similar scenario when Alter Bridge’s Myles Kennedy started being spotted with a noticeably T-style PRS guitar on stage a few years back. Sections of the internet were widely incensed by the guitar’s very existence, and weren’t shy about letting people know this fact when the guitar, dubbed the NF 53, and its Kennedy signature sibling launched just over two years ago.

Some people loved to hate on the NF 53 and MK. Especially in their unconventional ‘doghair’ finishes – which uses contrasting-colour grain filler to give a striking effect. But then PRS revealed that the guitars were the brand’s top two best-selling USA guitars in 2023, despite only being launched in June of that year.

Again, the naysayers went quiet, and the stage was set for the NF 53 to follow the Silver Sky into the SE range, where the ‘PRS Telecaster’ could truly become a disruptive force in the T-style market. And here, two years on, is the result.

PRS SE NF 53 – what is it?

The first thing to be aware of is that this is not simply a Telecaster with a PRS headstock. Smith’s reputation as one of the most important and innovative minds in the history of electric guitar design is based on his ability to take something and evolve and iterate on it to create a modern instrument that’s more versatile and more reliable.

So yes, on the surface the SE NF 53, like its US-made forebear, is a single-cut, swamp ash-bodied guitar with a bolt-on maple neck that sports 22 frets and a 25.5” scale length. At the other end you’ll find a plate-style steel bridge, a pair of pickups and a control layout that comprises a shared volume and tone controls and a three-way blade selector switch. So far, so Fullerton.

But, this is where the PRS magic so often resides – because a closer look will see that this is not your grandaddy’s T-type in almost every way that matters. That swamp ash body has a more rounded feel than the original, with some well-considered contours on the back and around the cutaway to make it sit a little better.

That bridge I mentioned? It’s Smith’s own design, and sports a pair of adjustable brass saddles – one for the treble strings and one for the bass. Then there are the pickups that give this guitar its name.

Instead of traditional single coils, here you’ll find a pair of PRS’s Narrowfield DD (Deep Dish) “S” units. These differ significantly from the traditional with taller bobbins to fit more winds and extra metal pieces in between the magnets for a focused, powerful tone – this is every bit a noiseless humbucker, but one designed for twang as well as rock.

The one notable difference between the SE version and its US counterpart is the pickguard – the dinky option on the original has been replaced with a sweeping Custom-style plate that holds the pickups and all the controls.

The obvious reason for this is to make this guitar easier and cheaper to build. Instead of having to individually mount each pickup and pot to the body (which involves both front and back routing), you can simply borrow a lesson from the Strat and mount everything on the ‘guard, meaning a much more straightforward assembly at scale.

And, whisper it, but I think the guitar actually looks better with the larger guard – sometimes mass production can have unintended benefits…

PRS SE NF 53 – build quality and playability

Pulling the SE NF 53 out of its included gigbag and the first thing you have to remark on is the finish. I have the ‘White Doghair’ option – which is probably the most polarising of the three offered at launch. It features an off-white base coat with black filler in the grain, giving a striking presentation of the grain of the swamp ash.

Many will probably prefer the flat white option, or indeed the less overt Black Doghair option, but I dig it – it reminds me of a meerschaum pipe in some ways. It’s certainly a conversation starter. It’s also gloss-finished so you won’t get the tactile feel of the wood grain, even if it might look it from a distance.

PRS’s SE line has been the benchmark for build quality and consistency for import guitars, and nothing about the NF 53 challenges that reputation. The finish is expertly applied and every screw, joint and part feels solid, snug and reliable.

One thing that’s also hard to ignore is the weight. Swamp ash is a wood in increasingly short supply, and so you have to expect that the stuff being used for a sub-$1,000 guitar isn’t going to be the absolute cream of the crop. Still, it was an eyebrow raiser to see this guitar tip the scales at around 8.5lbs/3.8kgs. While I’ve played other SE NF 53s that weigh considerably less than this, I’ve also seen some that weigh even more.

Some people will not have an issue with this kind of heft, of course, and if it pays you back with more sustain than you’d normally expect it could be a worthy trade-off. But a T-type that’s verging on Les Paul territory weight-wise is still something you’ll want to be aware of.

Strapping it on and those extra body contours make an instant case for themselves, making the guitar sit in a way that feels comfortable and ergonomic. It’s helped by a very welcoming but still characterful playing experience. It’s a very full neck shape, but thanks to the immaculately applied satin finish, it’s still very comfortable. What’s more, due to the 25.5” scale length strings bend more easily, almost like it is a tremolo guitar instead of a hardtail. The neck shape is very full, but it doesn’t feel it thanks to the satin finish.

PRS SE NF 53 – sounds

The NF 53 has a bright and resonant unplugged quality – perhaps not as lively as its US-made brethren but it still feels alive in the hands. The bigger test is to come of course – the plugged in T-style sound is iconic and distinctive, but is that even what we’re going for here?

In short: no. Putting the NF 53 into an amplifier and it becomes instantly clear that while this guitar has a bevvy of sounds at its disposal, it’s not a Telecaster in the traditional sense. The overall tonality is cleaner and less brittle or biting.

These Deep Dish pickups have a sound that’s very much their own, but that’s no bad thing at all – if pushed I’d say they sit somewhere between P-90s and mini-humbuckers. In practice, it gives you a very full tonality played cleanly, but adding some gain is where this guitar really comes into its own.

With overdrive and distortion, the pickups really fill out – adding body and beef, and a very impressive amount of sustain and grit. But that’s not all – shape the tone of your amp and controls to extract a nice helping of T-style twang from the NF 53, too. It’s perhaps not quite as spanky as the classic, but it’s nice to be able to go there when you need to.

PRS SE NF 53 – should I buy one?

The NF 53 might look like PRS’s Telecaster, but this is very much its own guitar. The sounds are beefy and muscular, and it definitely loses a little bit of the T-type character as a result of that. But you can argue that what we gain here is probably more useful and usable for today’s musician anyway.

Because that’s the thing, this isn’t a PRS take on a classic – that’s not the way Paul Reed Smith operates. He’s reinterpreting the bolt-on singlecut for the needs of the modern player – and in doing so he’s departed from many of our traditional notions for what this type of guitar should be.

You can also make the argument that there are plenty of great traditional T-style guitars in this price point with Fender on the headstock, and so what would be gained from adding another? Again, this is not PRS’s style.

Instead what we get is a guitar that evokes that lineage but adds something different to the pot – all while adding a level of build, fit and finish that continues to set the SE line apart from the rest of the (rapidly improving) Asian-made pack.

Be careful though, plug one in, and you might find yourself going home with it – it’s just that good. In fact, it might be the best SE PRS yet..

PRS SE NF 53 – alternatives

It would be rather silly to talk about T-type alternatives and not start with Fender’s own of course. The Mexico-made Player II and Player II Modified range offer an upgraded and more pro-ready take on the traditional recipe, and its Telecaster ($1,049/£949) is very impressive. If you want another affordable T-type that is sonically on another plane, Manson’s MBM-2H (£569) sports a pair of high-output humbuckers and a killswitch.

The post PRS SE NF 53 review: “it might look like PRS’s Telecaster, but this is its own guitar” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

If you were to think of the best rock song ever, you’d probably start by casting your mind back to something truly classic, but for Brian May, one of the greatest tracks ever made was released in the 2010s.

The Red Special-wielding Queen legend says The Struts’ Could Have Been Me is one of the greatest, and wishes he could have heard its inspirational lyrics at a young age. May has recently teamed up with the band to release a new version of the song, which features him on guitar.

• READ MORE: “There is hope in the world of rock ‘n’ roll”: Matt Sorum hails Yungblud as rock’s next great star after Hollywood Palladium show

Released in 2013, Could Have Been Me was originally the leading single from the band’s debut album, Everybody Wants. Speaking of his love for the song, May tells Classic Rock, “I wish I’d heard that song when I was a kid. It’s a classic.

“It’s one of the best rock songs ever,” he continues. “It was actually bigger in America than it was in Britain: it passed people by over here, and it shouldn’t have done. I’m hoping that this is an opportunity for the song to really connect all around the world.”

He adds, “It’s a very inspirational song. ‘I don’t want to look back and think I didn’t live my life and take all the opportunities that were in front of me’. I love that sentiment. You can say it in words, of course, but you really feel it in the song. Could it be me? It says everything that a kid needs to know when they’re growing up.”

As for the band’s vocalist, Luke Spiller, May thinks he actually has a lot in common with Freddie Mercury: “Working with Luke, I’m often thinking of Freddie. There are a lot of similarities. They both have this unstoppable belief. They have incredible voices, they’re great songwriters, but they have that extra ingredient: ‘I’m going to do this, I’m going to let the world come to me.’ That’s what Freddie had, and that’s what I see in Luke.”

Check out the song below:

Could Have Been Me by The Struts and Brian May is out now on streaming services. The Struts are due to head out on tour later this September – find out where you can catch them live via their website.

The post “I wish I’d heard that song when I was a kid”: Brian May says this modern track is “one of the best rock songs ever” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

During the lead up to Back To The Beginning, it was looking like the organisation of the event was going to be pretty hectic. According to Zakk Wylde, that was certainly the case on the big day, as he likens the experience to “juggling chainsaws”.

Of course the madness all turned out to be worth it, with the event drawing in millions in ticket sales that will go on to support Ozzy Osbourne’s chosen charities. The final gig also brought a beautiful close to the Black Sabbath story, with Osbourne sadly passing away just a matter of weeks after.

• READ MORE: “My father always thought you were a c**t”: Jack Osbourne slams Roger Waters for saying he “couldn’t give a f**k” about Ozzy Osbourne’s music

Back in early July before the event took place in Birmingham, England on the 5th, Wylde shared that plans for the event were still up in the air: “Nobody knows what’s going on”, he said, and likened it to “Ozzfest on steroids”. Even now, he tells Guitar World (in its print magazine) just how chaotic it continued to be on the day itself.

“I was just more worried about making sure Oz was okay for the whole performance, you know? So, with Mama, I’m Coming Home, when we got the acoustic out, I had to be like, ‘Keep the guitar away from the microphone so I can sing,’ because Oz’s voice was having trouble at certain notes.

“I was just like, ‘I need to make sure I’m always there so I can double him,’ and I was three feet away from the microphone when I started playing the song,” he continues. “I started, and I go, ‘Wait, hold on a second, I’m like three, four feet from the friggin’ microphone.’ [Laughs] I was like, ‘I gotta gear near the microphone,’ so I had to almost stop playing, lift the guitar up and put it over the mic.”

Wylde concludes, “It was like juggling balls or chainsaws while being on a skateboard. It was actually pretty funny, but it was business as usual. But yeah… It’s supposed to be the most important show ever, and everything’s on the fly.”

Though the total amount of money Back To The Beginning has made has been disputed, namely by Sharon Osbourne herself, a group of economists at the University of Birmingham have suggested that they have a better estimate of the actual numbers from ticket sales.

According to Dr. Matt Lyons of the University of Birmingham, tickets for the monumental Villa Park show brought in a total of £33.8 million. The money raised is going to Cure Parkinson’s, the Birmingham Children’s Hospital, and Acorns Children’s Hospice.

The post “It was like juggling chainsaws while being on a skateboard”: Zakk Wylde on the pressures of playing with Ozzy Osbourne at Black Sabbath’s final gig appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Back in 1969, John McLaughlin was able to live out every guitarists’ dream – jamming with Jimi Hendrix. However, the experience proved to be more of a nightmare thanks to some shoddy gear.

Picture this – its the 25 March, 1969 and McLaughlin waltzes into Record Plant. The New York studio had hosted Hendrix while recording 1968’s Electric Ladyland – and he was back for more. “I walked into the studio with Mitch Mitchell [Hendrix’s drummer]… and it was LOUD,” the jazz guitarist tells Ultimate Guitar. “There was a big party going on, and that’s where I met Buddy Miles for the first time… Buddy was already playing some boogaloo… And Jimi was there.”

• READ MORE: “If you want to trace the origins of heavy metal back to anything, that’s where I would go”: Music journalist says this Jimi Hendrix song gave birth to metal music

Alongside McLaughlin, Hendrix and Miles, Dave Holland was also there on bass. And, as McLaughlin describes the jam – which lasted 6 hours, spanning from 2am to 8am – it sounds like quite the occasion. “There were quite a few guitar players there,” he recalls. “A lot of people. It was a big party.”

Unfortunately, McLaughlin was at a disadvantage – he only had an acoustic guitar to hand. “The only guitar I had was a Gibson Hummingbird,” he frowns. “I’d moved to Europe by that time, and I’d run out of money! I had to sell my really nice Gibson guitar.”

Strapped for cash, he’d only been able to afford the Hummingbird in lieu of a more expensive electric model. “It was pretty cheap, and I had a DeArmond pickup over [the sound hole],” he recalls. “It was a bit of a disaster.”

In his opinion, McLaughlin’s invention wasn’t quite up to scratch. “At that volume, I plugged my guitar in, and it was instant feedback,” he says. “It was really hard to play. It was unfortunate. I needed a solid body guitar on that session.”

Despite his handicap, the jam didn’t sour his relationship with Buddy Miles. In fact, the percussionist even gladly agreed to feature on McLaughlin’s 1970 record, Devotion.

While he didn’t have the chance to impress Hendrix on that fateful night of jamming, McLaughlin notes that he did end up meeting Hendrix again – and he didn’t seem to hold his acoustic nightmare against him. “He was a sweet guy,” McLaughlin says. “We had a chance to talk, and he was just totally unpretentious.”

“I think he knew he was causing quite a revolution on the electric guitar,” he adds. “He certainly affected me, and about another five million guitar players. He was a one-man revolution on the guitar. It was unbelievable what he was doing, with a wah-wah pedal and a Marshall amp. That was it!”

The post “It was a bit of a disaster”: Why John McLaughlin had to use a cheap acoustic during a jam with Jimi Hendrix appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Guitarist Jake E. Lee has assured that there were no hard feelings between himself and Ozzy Osbourne during their final meeting before the legendary Prince of Darkness passed away.

Osbourne died just a couple of weeks after his reunion with Black Sabbath for their final Back To The Beginning show together. Lee got to chat with him shortly at a photoshoot prior to the event, and says it gave him closure following a sour ending to his stint in Osbourne’s solo band.

• READ MORE: “I couldn’t get up to the top frets, but the SG suited me perfectly”: Why Tony Iommi never became a Les Paul player

Lee played in the band between 1982 and 1987, following Randy Rhoads’ tragic death. He was eventually fired over the phone by Osbourne’s wife and manager, Sharon, which he did not see coming.

Despite having not seen Osbourne since the firing, his recent and final catch up with the late vocalist went swimmingly. He tells Guitar World in its print magazine, “I did get to talk to him. There was a big photoshoot a couple days before the gig, and I talked with Sharon, and she brought me over to Ozzy.

“There’s no ill will; there has never been any on my part. Business is business. I don’t think anything they ever did was to try and fuck over Jake; it was always about business. I didn’t know how they’d be, but they were amazing, friendly, open, welcoming and loving. I hadn’t seen either of them in decades, and after the show, on the flight back, I got a text from Ozzy.”

Lee continues, “He said he was sorry he couldn’t spend more time with me. And he said that when he got back to LA, he’d shoot me a text and maybe we could get together and shoot the shit for a while. Everything’s cool. I’m glad it’s resolved and everybody still likes each other.”

He goes on to share how connecting with Osbourne again was a “big bucket list check-off”, stating, “There’s a certain amount of closure. For years, in the back of my head, it was like, ‘I hope I get to see Ozzy one more time.’ I would’ve hated for the last time I spoke to him to be in 1987. I wanted to tell him I’m grateful for the opportunity he gave me.”

The post “Nothing they ever did was to try and f**k over Jake – it was always about business”: Jake E. Lee reflects on seeing Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne at Black Sabbath’s final show appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Do you like watching people fail after they have talked themselves up? Of course you do, you’re human. Do you like watching the Hives fail after they have talked themselves up? Well, you’re still waiting to find out, aren’t you? Their new record The Hives Forever Forever The Hives won’t give you any closure on that front.

Arriving more than three decades on from the suited-and-booted iconoclasts’ formation in Fagersta, Sweden, it is another flex by a band who are still rattling along at high speed, powered by volume, treble and battleworn chemistry. “It kind of feels like we’re on an upward trajectory,” guitarist Nicholaus Arson, aka Niklas Almqvist, says and, remarkably, there’s a lot more than bravado behind his assessment.

• READ MORE: The Beths Pick Their Five Most Honest Guitar Records Of All Time

The Hives’ seventh album is, in some ways, a reaction to what came before it. By landing barely two years after the release of The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons, it course-corrects the yawning, decade-plus wait for a follow up that took hold after 2012’s Lex Hives. It’s a record by a touring group, its songs gathering momentum on the road and reaping the rewards of hundreds of on-stage reps. It’s about striking while the iron is hot.

“Recording when you’ve toured for two years is both good and bad,” Almqvist says. “It’s kind of fatiguing, but you have a band that sounds good, you know? You have to rehearse the songs, but your timing is still intact. You don’t have to practise to start sounding like the band that you are. It’s already sorted.”

The Hives Forever Forever The Hives pulls together two threads in the Hives’ story — it’s both a high-gloss rock album by some old heads and also a lean, mean garage-punk LP by musicians who’re still connected to their roots. It’s their attempt at making an “arena record”, inspired by their experiences opening for AC/DC and the Rolling Stones, but in executing that it seems like they’ve realised that a Hives arena record is actually just a Hives record assembled in a manner that pays attention to the basics: knife-wielding riffs, shoutalong hooks and a remorseless rhythm section.

“What’s an arena record for us?” Almqvist asks. “Maybe Back in Black? It’s pretty traditional stuff. Traditional-sounding drums, traditional-sounding guitars, great sounds. Maybe that was our take on it — you don’t have to do so much weird stuff if you’re going to try to make a classic rock record.”

Like its immediate predecessors, it was partly recorded at Stockholm’s Riksmixningsverket, the studio co-founded by ABBA’s Benny Andersson, while there was also creative input from Mike D, he of Beastie Boys fame. Crucially, though, it was tracked with Pelle Gunnerfeldt, whose gonzo style characterised their first three records. It’s the first time he’s produced a full LP for the Hives since 2004, with everyone from Pharrell Williams to Josh Homme having a crack in the intervening years, even if he’s steadfastly kept a finger in the pie, whether that’s as a mixer, engineer or sounding board.

Here, there’s energy and grit beyond what might be expected from a band this deep into their career, a youthfulness that bursts from Paint A Picture’s ringing chords and the blown out swagger of Enough is Enough. “Pelle’s always been around,” Almqvist says. “Kind of like us, in a way, he’s in a good spot right now. He’s making great sounding music — he’s done magical things with Viagra Boys. We’re in good shape. The rest of it is work. You work until the record sounds good. A studio is a studio. It can be anywhere, really. I don’t think we trust magic as much as other people do. For us it’s always work. That’s just the grind, you know?”

Reflecting the momentum that led them into the studio and this direct approach to documenting these songs, Almqvist and his co-guitarist Vigilante Carlstroem (Mikael Karlsson) threw their live set ups at the problem. “We probably used our regular guitars way more than we ever did before,” Almqvist says. “I mean, we probably haven’t used them this much since the first record, when we had no other guitars. The second record we recorded in Pelle’s studio, and he’s always collected Travis Beans and Kramers with metal headstocks, stuff like that. We used a lot of his gear on that record and from Veni Vidi Vicious onwards we played anything, really, that was in the studio. Anything that sounded good.”

While Karlsson has pinwheeled between his one true love, a ‘59 Epiphone Coronet, plus a Les Paul, and a Flying V along the years, Almqvist’s choices have remained decidedly Telecaster-shaped. His Sundberg Arsonette, a guitar of his own design that is halfway between a Tele and a Firebird, sat this one out, but his 1970s Telecaster Custom, a battered and bruised road-dog with just a fizzing stock bridge pickup, was in full flow. Amp-wise, The Hives Forever Forever The Hives leans on another old face: a Standel Custom that’s been around since the Veni Vidi Vicious era. “This is where it gets a bit dull to talk to me about guitars, because I picked them 25 years ago and ran with it,” he says.

And how. The Hives are older now, but thankfully they’re not wiser. No prog song suites here, no plaintive reflections on mortality, just ripping garage-rockers. In that spirit, we asked Almqvist to pick his five favourite Hives riffs or, to put it another way, to tell us five times the Hives were the best band on the planet. Unsurprisingly, he found it quite difficult to narrow it down. “I came to the conclusion that there are a whole bunch of riffs that I really like,” he says.

“A lot of them are older, I guess,” he continues. “They kickstarted things for us, they were riffs we managed to craft into songs early on, when we were finding our sound. If you’re a high jumper, the first time you clear 2.40, that’s amazing, but when you’ve done it 20 times the novelty is going to wear off a little bit. That first time, when you’ve nailed it, is a good feeling.”

Main Offender (Veni Vidi Vicious, 2000)

“People always ask me, ‘What’s your favorite song to play live?’ And I always say Main Offender. I really love that little guitar intro going into what’s probably one of my favorite riffs. It’s very much an updated version of the Sonics, one of my favorite bands. We always try to be like a punk band with AC/DC riffs, you know? Maybe a punk riff, but they would have that start and stop element. Main Offender is totally one of those.”

Die, All Right! (Veni Vidi Vicious, 2000)

“It’s on that record, too. The verse from Die, All Right! is one of my favourite riffs. It’s also very Sonics inspired. Main Offender, or Die, All Right! are riffs. I guess some will say Hate To Say I Told You So but it’s more like chords in a sequence. Is that a riff? I guess it is, but it’s not like a blues riff or a boogie riff or something. I like Hate To Say I Told You So because it really gave us a career, even though it wasn’t the song that I thought would give us a career. I thought that was probably going to be Die, All Right!.”

A.K.A. I-D-I-O-T (Barely Legal, 1997)

“I really like A.K.A. I-D-I-O-T. The intro bit is really good, and I really like both the verse and the chorus. On that record, too, I really like Here We Go Again. That’s a great riff. Barely Legal was the first record where I felt, ‘This is so cool, this is what I want our music to sound like.’ I remember listening to the master in my basement on one of those CD Walkmans. It was so great [working with] Pelle Gunnerfeldt. He was probably the only guy recording music [in Stockholm] who had ever heard about the New Bomb Turks.”

Bogus Operandi (The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons, 2023)

“To me, that’s a sort of a traditional Hives riff. What I like about it, too, is that it evolves during the song. There’s a key change, and there’s that bit at the end where you sort of cut the riff in half, and you play that outro bit. There’s a take on it through that middle eight, or whatever you want to call it, where you let it set sail and send it out to sea for a bit.”

Bad Call (The Hives Forever Forever The Hives, 2025)

“I should pick a favorite from the latest record, too. There are a lot of great riffs on there. Hooray Hooray Hooray has a great riff, Paint a Picture has a great riff, but I think my favourite is the verse to Bad Call. It’s the drums that are the star in that one, the chords accent the drums and then travel through the song. If it was just the drums, maybe you’d get a bit bored on your journey towards the chorus.”

The Hives’ The Hives Forever Forever The Hives is out on August 29 through PIAS.

The post Five times the Hives were the best band in the world (according to the Hives) appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Brian Wampler, founder of the Wampler pedal brand, thinks the rise of digital amp modellers could go on to impact the gear industry in a similar way to Napster’s lasting effect on the consumption of music.

Growing numbers of big league artists are turning to brands like Neural DSP, Fractal, and Line 6 for their impressive amp modellers for touring and large shows. Though eliminating the need to carry around a hefty pedalboard while on the road sure is useful, it seems traditional pedal manufacturers are growing concerned with how such gear will go on to impact the sales of their traditional pedals and amplifiers.

• READ MORE: Metallica lawyer says Napster lawsuit was necessary to “set the ground rules for what music is worth”

For those unfamiliar with the infamous story of Napster, let us fill you in on the details: Napster was a peer-to-peer music sharing site that existed in the late 1990s and early 2000s, though reports suggest it will be returning in the form of an interactive music platform.

Around that time Lars Ulrich and his Metallica bandmates discovered that a demo version of their song I Disappear was being played on radio stations without their permission, which the group eventually traced back to Napster. The band’s entire catalogue was available to download for free on the site, leading to Metallica responding with a lawsuit, ultimately leading to its closure.

Some still argue that, despite its shutdown, the creation of Napster created a springboard for subscription-based streaming platforms to come along, which have drastically changed how we listen to music, and how we value its financial worth.

Speaking to Adam Wakeling on the Products of Music podcast, Brian Wampler believes a similar shift is occurring in the gear world: “I think, really, everyone in the pedal market is concerned. I think it’s going to take a big chunk of the market… as well as [create a] two-band market,” he says (via Guitar World).

Wampler feels there are “two paths” for manufacturers going forward: “You can always stick your head in the sand and ignore it and think, ‘It’s not going to happen to me,’ and then wonder what happens in five or 10 years. Or you can say, ‘It’s going to happen. I need to make a pivot here.’”

He later continues, “It’s analogous to Napster – for those who remember that, that’s where everybody who had music that you just uploaded to Napster, and now no one needs to buy any more music.

“So, the question is, ‘Well, what do you do?’ Eventually, Spotify forms, you know? I mean, is that good? Not if you’re an artist, it’s not good. Not really, not unless you’re just using the music as a marketing tool.”

Wampler’s move into adapting to the digital world has seen the brand release a line of plugins. Currently it sells three, which are virtual versions of some of its most popular physical pedals: The Terraform Multi Modulation, Metaverse Multi Delay, and its Catacombs Reverb/Delay.

Find out more about Wampler, or view its current range of plugins. 

The post Brian Wampler likens the rise of amp modellers to Napster’s impact on music: “I think it’s going to take a big chunk of the market” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols has broken his wrist, and the band have subsequently had to postpone their upcoming tour dates.

The Sex Pistols, fronted by Frank Carter, will eventually be rescheduling the shows they had planned across North and South America. The tour was announced back in March, with their North American run originally due to kick off at the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas, Texas, on 16 September.

• READ MORE: “My father, a brilliant musician, didn’t believe in me”: Pete Townshend attributes his guitar-smashing antics to feelings of rejection from his father

In a post shared on social media, the band states: “We have some unfortunate news to share about our upcoming North and South American performances. We’ll let Steve explain what’s going on: ‘I’ve got some good news and bad news. What do you want first?

“‘Okay, the bad news: I’ve broken my wrist, so unfortunately we won’t be doing any shows for a while,’” says Jones. “‘The good news is the surgeon said I will be back playing guitar in the not-too-distant future. The other good news is I’ll be 70 tomorrow! God bless, and God save the wrist.’”

The band adds: “The performances will be postponed and rescheduled when Steve has fully recovered. Please check local venue websites and our social media for more information. We appreciate your understanding and support.”

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Jones recently discussed how Frank Carter has changed the live dynamic of the band in an interview with Guitar World. He told the magazine, “Frank’s a lot younger, so he’s got a lot more energy. He’s literally the best; I call him the ringmaster. He loves getting the crowd going; he goes crowd surfing and just takes the heat off of me, [Paul Cook] Cookie and Glen [Matlock].”

Carter is of course filling in for John Lydon, who has criticised the band’s decision to reunite with Carter on vocals. “He’s definitely not trying to be Johnny Rotten. He’s really something else, and he’s made it a lot of fun,” Jones said of the difference between the two.

“I’ve got nothing but love for John. He was brilliant back in the day, and I never would take that away from him. I would never deny it; he was fantastic. But I think we’ve just grown apart… l’ll never shut the door, but I don’t think he’d have the energy like Frank does, to be honest with you.”

The post “God save the wrist”: Sex Pistols postpone their North and South American tour dates due to Steve Jones’ injury appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Pink Floyd founding member Roger Waters has reignited an age-old feud with Black Sabbath, snubbing the late Ozzy Osbourne in a new interview – and Ozzy’s son Jack isn’t too happy about it.

Speaking to The Independent Ink, Waters discusses how pop culture often diverts attention away from politics and humanitarian issues. He namedrops “Taylor Swift [and] Kim Kardashian’s bum” as unimportant topics the media uses to detract from vital topics – before, unfortunately, opting to lump Black Sabbath and The Prince of Darkness into the same category.

“It all doesn’t matter… and Ozzy Osbourne – who just died, bless him!” he adds to his list of media buzz topics. “Whatever that state that he was in his whole life, we’ll never know… He was all over the TV for years, with his idiocy and nonsense.”

• READ MORE: Birmingham University economists say Black Sabbath’s final show made £33.8 million from physical ticket sales

After already criticising the late musician, he also decides to criticise Black Sabbath’s music on the whole. “The music, I have no idea,” he says. “I couldn’t give a fuck!”

“I don’t care about Black Sabbath, I never did,” he announces. “I have no interest in ‘BLAAAAH!’, biting the heads off of chickens, or whatever they do. I couldn’t care less.”

Now Jack Osbourne, son of Ozzy Osbourne, who passed away on 22 July just weeks after Sabbath’s grand Back To The Beginning farewell show, has responded by calling the former Pink Floyd man a “cunt”.

“Hey Roger Waters – fuck you,” he writes in a new Instagram post. “How pathetic and out of touch you’ve become. The only way you seem to get attention these days is by vomiting out bullshit in the press.”

“My father always thought you were a cunt,” he adds. “Thanks for proving him right.”

This isn’t the first time Waters has shared his dislike of Sabbath’s music. Speaking in music magazine Melody Maker back in 1970, he critiqued the band’s debut album Paranoid, honing in on the album’s cover of Crow’s Evil Woman.

“Well, well, well… I’m speechless,” he said [via Louder]. “Well, almost. It’s got that kind of Dragnet, Peter Gunn, American detective series beginning. You keep thinking it’s going to start. You think that for the first minute but then, if you are really perceptive, you realise it isn’t going to start, and that’s all there is.”

It’s a comment that would stick with Sabbath for many years, with Tony Iommi even mentioning it in a radio interview with Planet Rock in 2017. “I used to read the slaggings we’d get and I’d just think ‘Why?’” he said. “There was one comment that really hurt and that didn’t actually come from the press. It came from Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters.”

“He reviewed Paranoid when it came out as a single because he was reviewing the singles that week for a music paper,” Iommi recalled. “He gave it such a terrible review. I thought ‘Blimey!’ Hearing that from a fellow musician seemed really harsh.”

The post “My father always thought you were a c**t”: Jack Osbourne slams Roger Waters for saying he “couldn’t give a f**k” about Ozzy Osbourne’s music appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.