Steve Miller. All photos by Tim Brown.

Though obviously a familiar name given his hits from the 1970s and ’80s were FM staples and today are virtually ubiquitous on classic-rock radio, last month we talked with Steve Miller about his less-discussed musical pedigree. Literally raised in the company of some of the biggest names in guitar music (Les Paul, T-Bone Walker, etc.), by age 12 Miller was earning money as a musician before eventually moving to Chicago to make a living playing the blues, then attaining superstardom after releasing a string of hit singles and albums.

Though never much into vintage guitars, Miller is nonetheless a prolific guitar collector who works with some of the best-known luthiers, creating custom instruments.

We pick up the conversation discussing how he came to possess a small army of recent-issue Gibsons.

You recently went on a hunt for good Les Pauls. What were you looking for – new stuff, vintage stuff?
I was looking for both. In 2006 I was awarded the Les Paul Tech Award at the TEC Foundation for Excellence in Audio’s Technical Excellence and Creativity Awards show, and was presented a Les Paul ’59 reissue. It’s a beautiful instrument and a lot of fun to play. In fact, a lot of the solos on (Miller’s new album) Bingo! were done with that guitar.

A while after that, I was at Chicago Music Exchange looking for a Gibson doubleneck. I tried a few and wasn’t satisfied, and they had the Jimmy Page-signed version on the wall. I said, “Okay, bring it down.” So the guy pulls it down, and it’s one of 200 doublenecks that Tom Murphy put together. It was the first time I had seen one of his, and what a great guitar, especially the six-string SG section. I was knocked out. It turns out they had 11 doublenecks, and I tried them all. Suddenly, I was very impressed with what Tom Murphy and the Gibson Custom Shop were doing.

So I bought three of them and started looking for a “Murphy’d” Les Paul. Just as we were starting last year’s tour, I heard there was a Billy Gibbons Pearly Gates version coming out; I love the way Billy plays and I love his tone, so when I heard the Reverend was giving up the secrets, I jumped right onboard – his tone is so cool!

So, Scotty – my manager, who’s a guitar nut too – said, “Let me call around and see if I can find one. I played one and I think you’re gonna really love it.”

So we started looking, and I’m on the road when these two signed Billy Gibbons guitars show up – numbers 15 and 16. I tried them, and without a doubt, these guitars are the real deal. I mean they sounded so good; I started using number 15 onstage that night. I was delighted with how it felt, how it played, and especially with how I sounded on it. Then I found a couple of aged ones, serial numbers 22 and 23, and they were amazing, too. I started asking myself, “Wow, what is going on here?” Wherever we went, we started visiting whatever guitar stores were in that city.

Eventually, I ended up at the Gibson Custom Shop and met all the guys building these guitars. They were wonderful. I was so impressed by what they had accomplished. I couldn’t believe the quality of the guitars that were coming off that line. The five hours I was there, a lot of guitars got finished, and I played them all. All of them I have are really wonderful, easy to play, set up perfectly, and sound wonderful. We started recording with them, and I take four on tour with me.

The Storm-Thorgerson-designed cover of Steve Miller Band’s new album, Bingo!

You’ve also been talking with Gibson about building some customs, right?
Yes, I’m getting ready to place an order after trying a lot of different artist models, incorporating everything I’ve learned from them and have figured out playing my pearly gates for a year and from talking to Les himself over the years and his son Rusty about Les’ personal guitar.

The Gibson Custom Shop does some nice work.
I think they’re at the pinnacle of the guitar building history. I really do. This is the golden age for Gibson – it will be hard to get better than this. I’ve tried more than 30 Les Pauls and any of them would knock anybody’s socks off. There’s not one bad one in the bunch. And Tom Murphy, Pat Foley, Steve Christmas, and all the guys at the Custom Shop are to be congratulated for their hard work and the fine instruments they’re producing. There are a hundred men and women at the Custom Shop who are all very serious about their work, and they’re turning out wonderful guitars. Jimmy’s doubleneck 12-strings is priceless to me – I love them. They’re wonderful instruments, and Tom Murphy has done a great job. I prefer the Murphy guitar or a VOS, and before I tried them I just thought that was all a gimmick.

You said you have four of those on the road. What else are you taking on tour this year?
I just went through everything with Wes Leathers, my guitar tech, and we’re taking new Martin J-12-40E 12-strings that are really right on the mark. I’m using those for my acoustic sets, some different tunings – B, D, and E. I also use the D-45 and a D-41 for my acoustic set.

Are those newer Ds?
Well, I’ve been using them for the last 15 years. They’re well-played-in road guitars. I’m taking six John Bolin Strats with custom pickups made by Seymour Duncan, two BillyBo guitars with TV Jones pickups, a new Custom Shop VOS Les Paul Junior that has a P-90 that sounds like it’s a foot deep that Steve Christmas steered me to, and a couple of Bolin N/S guitars with custom electronics by Haz. I introduced Ned Steinberger to John Bolin, and John built the N/S models for me. Ned’s been a good friend for years; I’ve played lots of his guitars in my shows over the years.

For more than 20 years, Steve Miller has been working with luthier John Bolin to create unique instruments – solidbody, hollowbody, basses, etc. Here are a few.

I also have two CV Guitars, they are called PG Mods; Larry Corsa puts them together using Les Paul Standard fadeds with Manalishi pickups with an out-of-phase Peter Green setup, and they are great guitars, too. They’ve got great tone.

My search for the ultimate tone continues. I’m playing a Wildwood Gibson LP mod with a double-cut maple top, and they carve both sides of the maple top, which creates a small tone chamber. They had Gibson make 25 of them. Then, I ran into a client of Bolin’s who’s owns an original ’53 Les Paul goldtop, an original ’59 Les Paul Standard, and an original ’57 Strat, and I asked him, “Would you bring those to our gig?” We were doing a tribute for (late bandmate) Norton Buffalo at the Fox Theater in Oakland in January; he graciously brought all three – the ’59 was formerly Eric Johnson’s, with “Buddy” written on the pickguard. It was great to play the real deal and see what it really sounded like ’cuz I hadn’t played a real ’59 in so long, you know? And it was this lovely, sweet, clear-sounding guitar. It had all the stuff you wanted, and its lower strings had a clearer tone. You had to crank the amp up a little more, but once you did, the thing started to sing. It wasn’t as hot as a Burstbucker pickup, but it was clearer-sounding and a little sweeter, more musical. That’s why I started looking at Les Pauls again. I thought, “Okay, I get it.” I like that sweet sound more than I like just a super-hot sound. So in the end I think it’s all about pickups, really. The instruments that Gibson is building are as perfect as I could ask for especially when they have been Plecked… I see any new Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul as a perfect platform for whatever pickups you like. I pick the instruments that feel best and the neck that suits me the best – it isn’t about finish or color or whatever. I’ll change pickups all day long just to find the perfect match. I talked to Seymour Duncan after playing the ’59 and described to him what I thought I was hearing and he sent me two sets of pickups that were not wound as hot, and they sounded really good. You just sort of have to crank your amp up a little bit more, and then there it is.

Seymour’s Antiquity humbuckers have some really fantastic overtones…
That’s exactly what I came away with, and man what a sweet, fat, hot sound And if you want to go over the top, just turn up the amp two numbers – there it is!

So now I’ve got this great bunch of guitars and I’m hoping to build one with Edwin Wilson at Gibson’s Custom Shop that has a combination of all the right parts and pieces for my tone and me.

1. A Tom Anderson Guitarworks Drop T with graphics inspired by Native American art. 2. A Steve Andersen custom. 3. A Steve Andersen Emerald City. 4. A Jim Triggs New Yorker. 5. A Jim Triggs solidbody with mother-of-pearl covering.

What’s in the pedal board you use live?
The first thing is a switch that kills my microphone in the house PA but lets me talk directly to my in-ear-monitor mixer Steve McHale and the rest of the band through their in ear monitors. It’s handy for quick on the spot adjustments, messages to the house mixing engineer, or quick cues and changes to the band, the stage crew and guitar techs.

Then, for guitar there’s a Klon Centaur I use for the Gibson guitars, a Fulltone OCD for Stratocasters – it’s weird, but they always sound different in each venue; sometimes I switch guitar setups and one just feels better than the other.

Next is a Boss DD-2 set for when I play “Fly Like an Eagle.” Then there’s a Boss DD-2 set for short delays, a Keeley compressor, a Seymour Duncan SFX-07 Shape Shifter, and a Vox V847 wah. Everything’s plugged into a Voodoo Power supply and there’s a Radial SGI single-line transformer.

The pedal board runs to my Dr. Z Stang Ray, which then goes to a cab with two Celestion Gold 12” speakers.

We talked earlier (see the August issue) about how things came together so well while you were recording the songs on Bingo!. But we should also mention that you worked with renowned artist Storm Thorgerson on the cover art.
Yes, and it was a huge project! Storm listened to all the music and did 30 drawings. I picked the ones I liked, and then he went to Spain and shot the pictures (laughs)!

Steve Miller's current stage set is more than a little "guitar-inspired."

Certainly no half-hearted effort! His work for Pink Floyd involved some fairly extreme concepts.
Get this, man! We’re working on more projects, one where he’s digging a guitar-shaped hole in England that’s 60 feet long and five feet deep with people dressed in ’50s-style clothing pouring water into the guitar. For another, he did a drawing of vinyl discs coming out of the sky at an angle, landing in the desert. So we built the discs – they’re 30 feet in diameter!
So yeah, these are these huge, surreal Pink Floydian album covers.

And these are for your albums, like the other batch that you recorded during the Bingo! session?
Well, I started a record company – Space Cowboy Records. Perfect time to start a label (laughs)! Thank God we have our touring income, man. Seriously, though, it’s really exciting to be working with the kind of artists I’m finding. For a really a long time, I was uninspired about making records, mainly because of the business of it. It’s like, “I feel like doing a record. But I’ve got to call a lawyer and then micro manage the company,” you know? But this is different – a lot better, a lot more interesting, and a lot more fun, which is the way I want to do it. And hell, I’m 66 years old. I don’t have a lot of time!

Storm Thorgerson's rough sketch for an art project involving a 60-foot hole shaped like a guitar.

But do you still enjoy playing live?
I never felt that way about touring. I love to tour, I love to play, I’m excited about my new stage setup, I get excited working on set lists, putting things together, working on the acoustic section of the show and figuring out this and that. I love all of that.

But the business part is too irritating…
Right. I wasn’t very interested in doing it. But working with Storm, working with (recording engineer/co-producer) Andy Johns, and having somebody like Joe Satriani come in… Having (vocalist) Sonny Charles join the band, having the band up for it, having the sounds sort of wake up after a long, long time…

And with your own label, you’re the boss.
Yes. I don’t want to be mad at a record company, so it feels really good, like it’s in our hands, not some corporation that doesn’t care. It has that feeling of the good old days, when we’d record what we wanted to record.

And of course, these days you can’t record albums thinking they’ll make you a star. It just doesn’t work that way.
No. The whole business is so… it’s sad. I feel bad for young musicians because there’s no place to play, no place to grow. Pop music today is people groomed by the Disney Company and put on television, then made pop stars. It’s a very hard way to go. People like me would never have a chance today. I’m not a video artist. I can’t dance and make it look great and keep my hair just right.

The good news is I’ve found two groups I’m working with; one is The Danger Babes – two girls in San Francisco who are 20 years old, brilliant writers, and really great performers. They sound like a combination of Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, and Nash, only newer and better. And then there’s Max Marshall, a young guitarist and writer from Texas. He was 12 at the time we met, and a really good guitar player. I got him to come to New York and introduced him to Les Paul, and Les brought him onstage and he got to play with Les. He’s 16 now and burning it up; he’s somewhere between the Kinks and Led Zeppelin and the Moody Blues, and a phenomenal writer. For the last two years he has been to the Berkeley College of Music, taking guitar courses in the summer. He’s a real smart kid, and very talented. I hope to finish records with both acts next spring

6. & 7. Two hollowbody electrics by Jim Triggs with artwork inspired by World War II military aircraft. 8. A custom solidbody by Joe Veillette. 9. A highly-modified/altered Gibson L-1. 10. An early-'90s Gibson J-2000.

So, as label head, will you be producing their albums?
I will help them produce their own albums, but they’ll call the final shots, own their own publishing, and be their own bosses. I never was interested in producing other people because they always thought if I produced them they’d become rock stars. But these two acts have the hard part down – the writing and the musical talent. They’re great musicians and writers, hard workers, and they have musical ideas, which is exciting. I’m having fun now!

Participants in the Kids Rock Free program get their rock on; (from left) Dillon Brown, Matt Rubic, Emileen Bernal, and Alex Romero. Photo courtesy Kids Rock Free.

Go On, Give the Money and Jam!
Steve Miller is a huge believer in a music education program for kids age 7 to 17 called Kids Rock Free. Part of the Fender Center (a 501C charity based in Corona, California), its mission is to provide free and low-cost music lessons in piano, guitar, bass, voice, drums, and combo-band.

“In my opinion the Fender Museum and Music school is the best designed and operated community music program in the country,” said Miller. “It was built for a reasonable amount of money, it’s self-sustaining and it focuses on teaching music by involving parents and children in a way that inspires and rewards good work. That’s why I’ve performed three benefit concerts for the school and donated substantially to the program. It works. It is the best community project I’ve ever seen and is a model for the rest of the country to emulate.”

Since 1998, more than 12,000 students have taken part in the program, and bands from it have performed with and/or opened for the Steve Miller Band, Bad Company, Joe Walsh, Merle Haggard, Lit, Alien Ant Farm, Bo Diddley, Etta James, Dick Dale, and others.
Fender Center and Kids Rock Free are in the midst of a fundraising and marketing effort, assisted by The John F Kennedy Center’s AIC program and designed to address the needs of 800 kids waiting to participate in the program. For more, go to fendercenter.org.

This article originally appeared in VG September 2010 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Bruce Kulick with his ’53 Gibson Les Paul. Passed to him by his brother, Kulick played it on the Kiss hit singles “Forever” and “God Gave Rock ’N Roll To You.” All photos by Neil Zlozower

With his new album, BK3, Bruce Kulick brings out the big guns on what he calls his “…strongest solo disc ever.” Collaborating with friends old and new, he infused their personalities to create an album diverse in style and tones. He also raised the bar on his own musicianship. Kulick recently took us behind the scenes of his latest endeavor, explaining how BK3 came together with a mix of guests and a massive assortment of gear. He also brought out a selection of his personal treasures to ogle, including his beloved ’53 Gibson Les Paul – a converted goldtop that originally belonged to his brother, guitarist/producer Bob Kulick.

There’s an incredible variety of styles on this album. Did you write the material over an extended period of time?

Yes, but there would have been a variety of styles, no matter. I started writing after I got shot in October of 2003. A guy who had too much to drink was picking a fight with the bouncer at the Rainbow (night club). He decided to get a gun from his friend’s car and started shooting wildly on the street. One of the bullets ricocheted and went through the fleshy part of my right leg and another one nicked me right above my sideburn. So I was one inch from either being crippled or dead. They rushed me to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, then sent me home. By then, there were reports on CNN saying “…former Kiss guitar player shot in Los Angeles.” Then the phone was ringing non-stop. Believe it or not, with a bullet wound that goes straight through your leg, it heals from the inside out. You keep it clean, but there are no stitches or surgery! The L.A. police kept my leather pants as evidence, and I never got them back. But they were great, and did put the guy away.

Ironically, the first song I wrote for this record was “I’ll Survive.” The lyrics are about that night; I was very fortunate – blessed – that day. I pretty much started writing from that point on. I wanted to collaborate with [producer] Jeremy Rubolino, who I knew from the early Kiss days, because he’s related to Bob Ezrin. I knew he was talented, and I wanted to see what it would be like to write with him.

And how did it go?

Really well. We wrote a lot of material by the end of 2003 and continued through ’06. In some ways, the music was a little more pop than how the record turned out, I think because once I asked Gene Simmons to be on it, it snowballed into a “featured guest” kind of vibe that worked well. It’s definitely more than just one side of what I can do. And though I can carry a tune, my voice is not my strongest asset. But I did my best singing on this album.

(LEFT TO RIGHT) Kulick’s highly modified 1953 Gibson Les Paul. 1956 Gibson Les Paul Junior. 1958 Gibson Les Paul Special in TV Yellow.

How did you choose guests?

I’d worked with John Corabi in Union, and we work well together. Nick Simmons is Gene’s son, and I’ve known him all his life. I met Doug Fieger, from The Knack, at the Rock ’N Roll Fantasy Camp. Steve Lukather and I have a lot of mutual friends, and I’ve jammed with him before. He came into the project when I decided to include an instrumental track. He did a great job – I’m so proud of that instrumental. I’d worked with Eric Singer in Kiss, and he turned me on to Tobias Sammett, who has a tremendous voice – perfect for “I’m The Animal.” He’s in a couple of very popular groups in Europe.

The guests kind of pushed away some of the early material Jeremy and I wrote. I have four songs recorded with full drums, bass, guitars, and a reference vocal, but they’re unfinished because I thought the formula had to change once Gene, Nick, and John were onboard. They definitely helped set the tone of the album.

(LEFT TO RIGHT) This 1960 Gibson ES-355 TD Stereo with Bigsby was, for several years, the only semi-hollow in Kulick’s collection. This ’65 Gibson ES-345 TD is heard on several tracks on Kulick’s new solo album, BK3. ’65 Gibson ES-335 Stereo

Were the guests involved in writing?

All except Doug, who loved what we had with “Dirty Girl,” which is a power pop song. And he really nailed it. Nick wrote the lyrics and some of the melody of his track, “Hand Of The King.” He’s very popular because of the “Family Jewels” TV show and he’s such an interesting guy. He’s brilliant like his father, but he’s also the anti-Gene – so unaffected. He knows everything about all Kiss songs and albums, and he made references to me on Carnival Of Souls, which is really cool because that’s not a “big” Kiss album. He didn’t have a lot of experience in the studio and I think Gene knew he would get some good experience being part of this. He did a great job.

Like I said, I work well with Corabi, and it was Jeremy’s dream to work with him because he loved the last Union album, The Blue Room. John came in with great ideas, and I think it’s one of his best vocal tracks. The song is very strong. Jeremy played acoustic guitar on that one, and some bass, too. He really wanted to play bass on Gene’s song and even borrowed one of his Axe basses, which was funny.

Gene was a pleasure. We had some of the lyrics before we got into the studio, and we had the arrangements. He brought in the film crew from “Family Jewels,” and they set it up as something about Nick, and he did fool around in the vocal booth that day, but we were cutting Gene’s song. Nick’s was done later… but that’s the way reality TV works.

Brent Fitz played drums on almost every song except the instrumental, which was Kenny Aronoff. Eric Singer played on the song that Tobias sang because he introduced us, so that made sense. That track has real strings, which have a texture you can’t reproduce. We also have strings on the last song, “Life,” which was my George Harrison kind of thing.

(LEFT TO RIGHTCirca-’64 Gibson SG Junior. ’60s Gibson SG Special. 1967 Gibson EB-3.

I have to talk about Lukather, who is a true guitar hero. I can hold my own in the realm of what I do, but this guy pulls out unbelievable stuff – he can play anything! And he’s one of the most humble guys. He came in, didn’t really know the song, and Jeremy and I weren’t sure what we wanted; we had already recorded the theme and the choruses. So the verses and bridge are him, and a little of me. The solo with the modulation is completely him – anything with a wah or whammy bar is him. I played all the Les Paul-type parts that are more theme-oriented. It was really interesting because we just kept having him play and suggested ideas as we went along. He did this Jeff Beck-like thing where he’s making the guitar “talk” by picking close to the bridge. It’s great!

Luke came to the session with one of his signature Ernie Ball guitars, and it was tuned to concert pitch. But the song was in E flat. So I handed him one of my trusty red ESP Vintage Plus guitars, and he sounded like him even though he was playing my guitar through my Marshall 900-series head and all the gear I use.

I bring this up when I do clinics – your sound is in your hands, not so much in the gear. He was a little thrown by the fact that I have a block inside my Floyd, so it doesn’t pull upward; he’s used to having his float. But he got through it and he played great. Kenny Aronoff is kicking ass on that track, and I’ve got Jimmy Haslip, who’s a Grammy-winning bass player. We used to play together with Michael Bolton. Jimmy played my ’66 P-Bass; the engineer was this terrific guy who used to work with Paul McCartney, so I knew he was going to want Jimmy to play the P-Bass. Jimmy is left-handed, but plays bass strung right-handed.

What was the first track you recorded?

It was actually the last song we chose – “Fate.” It came from Kevin Churko, who worked with Ozzy Osbourne on Black Rain and is working on Ozzy’s new album. When he presents a track, he plays everything on it. But I had to make it my own, so Jeremy and I put our stamp on it. Lyrically, the track was supposed to be a little tongue-in-cheek with some Kiss titles, and it’s a cool opening track. I like the way it sets the pace – it says I mean business!

(LEFT TO RIGHT)1983 Gibson Moderne. This ’83 Gibson Custom Shop Explorer has a korina body. Kulick used it to record “Fate,” on BK3, and on the Kiss album, Revenge. Circa ’60s Gibson LG-1 in sunburst can be heard on many recordings by Kiss, Union, and solo albums.

When did you start recording?

Serious recording started in January, 2007, but because of traveling, gigging, doing Grand Funk Railroad gigs, Fantasy Camp, producing other artists that would keep me busy in the studio for two weeks at a time, I just couldn’t get to finishing the record until last May. It was crazy, but I’m very happy with the way it turned out.

Describe your studio setup. Did you have one main rig, or were there various amps for lead, rhythm, and texture tones?

The go-to amps are Marshall heads. The early 100-watt Marshall 900 is my best-sounding head. I have a Marshall Dual Reverb that sounds great; it’s switchable between 100 and 50 watts, and sometimes sounds better at 50 watts. I always use 4x12s with Celestion Vintage 30 speakers, though I do have a 4×10 cab I used a little. If I don’t want a Marshall sound, I have a ’66 Fender Bassman head, sometimes with a little overdrive through the Marshall cabinet. I also have a 2×12 Rivera cabinet with Vintage 30s.

I love my Orange Tiny Terror head. It’s killer, and I used it for some things toward the end of the recording. I also got some sounds out of an Egnator Rebel 20, which is a nice little amp for different textures. Another secret weapon is a Vox AC30 reissue I used on Kiss’ Carnival Of Souls. It’s a great amp.

Anything you hear that’s really crunchy and big-sounding is a Marshall head – the solos were mostly done with Marshall heads. Texture guitars were done with the Vox, the Orange, or the Egnator. And I used the studio’s Soldano one time.

(LEFT TO RIGHT) 1966 Höfner bass. Kulick used this custom ESP to record Kiss’ million-selling Crazy Nights album from 1988. This ’68 Fender Precision is the primary bass heard on BK3.

Let’s talk about the guitars that were used.

It was so much fun using so many different guitars! I did a lot of layering tones and textures, just as I had with the amps. I had some of my favorite ESPs, like the red ’90s Vintage Plus models with a humbucker, two single-coils and a Floyd Rose, and two more recent ESP Vintage Plus models. One is black with a Floyd and a humbucker, the other is white and has a standard three-single-coil setup. That one was used on the instrumental.

I had a lot of go-to guitars, like my ’53-conversion Les Paul, which was originally a goldtop with P-90s, but Tom Murphy painted it for me in ’91 or ’92, and he did a beautiful job – really brought out its mojo. It’s a nitro finish [with] a gorgeous sunburst. Even though the split of the maple top is very off-center, the grain is gorgeous. That guitar has a lot of “Kisstory.” My brother bought it in ’74 or ’75 and it had one double-white PAF at the time. I got it from him in the early ’80s and found another PAF for the neck position. The knobs are original, and I found nickel ’50s parts for it. I didn’t care if the tuners weren’t original. My brother used that guitar on Paul Stanley’s solo record in ’78 and probably on the Alive II studio tracks. I used it on “Forever,” “God Gave Rock ’N Roll To You,” and everything on the Union records. I used it a lot on Kiss’ Revenge.

Otherwise, I used quite a few Gibsons. I have a beautiful special edition ’62 reissue SG that was done for Guitar Center with kidney tuners on it, and it has a really good sound. I also used some of my old SGs, like a ’65 Standard, for a few parts. I used a cherry ’61 ES-330 that’s awesome, and a ’65 ES-345 with the Varitone, and I mic’ed up a ’58 ES-175 for some rhythm parts. It originally had one PAF, but someone converted it to a double-pickup. It has one of my favorite necks.

I have a ’58 reissue Les Paul that sounds amazing, and a ’96 Custom Shop goldtop with P-90s that’s got a big neck and a great sound. We needed a 12-string thing, and Jeremy owns a Gibson EDS-1275, so I begrudgingly used that on a few tracks. So if you hear a 12-string, it’s probably that. It’s a great guitar, but tuning it is like root canal surgery! I used a Cherry Red Gibson Les Paul Special reissue I found at Norman’s Rare Guitars for one of the parts on “Life.” It’s a really cool guitar. For some parts on “Fate,” I pulled out an ’83 Custom Shop Explorer I also used on Revenge. It’s cream-finished korina. I also used a ’95 SG with great Angus Young tone. I love that guitar!

I also used several of my Paul Reed Smith guitars because they tune amazingly in the studio. One is a hollowbody, one is a CE 22. Five are McCartys, which I love. I used a Whale Blue McCarty for a part on “Fate.” I also got a Singlecut 245 I played on Gene’s song, “Ain’t Gonna Die.” For the first solo, I played a Peavey Wolfgang that sounds great! I leave it in Las Vegas and use it with a band I jam with there. I love the neck. Another guitar was an Ibanez Paul Stanley PS-10 I bought years ago. It screamed on Nick’s song, “Hand of the King.”

I used a koa B.C. Rich Mockingbird from the early ’80s for some parts on “Fate.” You can get interesting tones out of it. There’s an Eagle Supreme I used a bit, and had used on Carnival Of Souls.

I used a few Fender guitars, too. I don’t have any vintage Teles, but I have a butterscotch reissue that sounds great. I found a Japanese Fender Strat from ’92 or ’93 with a rosewood fingerboard and two-tone sunburst. I wound up playing some of the leads on “I’ll Survive” with that one.

The two main acoustics were a 1970 Martin D-18 and an ’05 Gibson Dove, all-maple, so it’s really loud.

(LEFT TO RIGHT) ’68 Fender Jazz Bass in Olympic White. ’65 Fender Jazz Bass.

You mentioned the ’66 P-Bass and the Gene Axe bass. Were there others?

There was a ’71 Jazz Bass, and I borrowed a ’65 Hofner bass to play on “I’ll Survive.” And I bought a ’66 right after that. It was so cool I wanted my own. Nothing sounds like those – they’re very deep and big. I get why Paul McCartney recorded with one.

How did you decide which to use, track-by-track?

Generally, I use whatever works. I have more than 100 guitars, but I can’t bring all of them with me everywhere. So I’ll borrow a guitar in a studio if someone has something that will work. But again, I do have certain go-to guitars.

Which pedals did you use?

For overdrive, I’m still a big fan of the Boss SD-1. I usually go with the older Japanese version. Jeff Rubin, who I met while waiting on line in the post office, has a company called GeekMacDaddy. Vintage Guitar reviewed his British Ball Breaker pedal, which I really like. I’m not sure if I used that one on my record, but he makes a few strange overdrive pedals I used in the last year of recording – Geek Screamer and Geek Ranger. Before that, I went for all my standard pedals, like the Boss SD-1 and CE-2 chorus. I have a couple of vintage wahs, too. Jeff modded one of my Dunlop Hendrix wahs and I was very happy with the way it turned out. I also used a FoxRox Captain Coconut for the Uni-Vibe effect. Those are cool. It also has fuzz and octave effects in it, though I just used the Uni-Vibe effect. I also have a Maxon analog delay. I used a BBE Mind Bender chorus/vibrato pedal on “Fate.” I really like that pedal. I used an MXR Distortion Plus for a nasty tone on ”Hand Of The King.” The solo on that one has the PS-10 Paul Stanley guitar with a vintage wah and the MXR Distortion Plus.

Most of the bass tracks were recorded through a Tech 21 SansAmp PSA-1. If we were in a studio that had a big bass amp, we might plug into an amp. But the PSA-1 was what we used most of the time.

Do you prefer tracking guitar parts in the control room, or in the same room as your amp?

I do my guitar tracks in the control room. I’m never in the same room as the amp, because it’s too loud. When I want feedback, I’ll go in, but I want to be able to communicate with the engineer and Jeremy, and I can hear things exactly how I want them better when I’m in the control room. We make it loud, and it sounds like there’s a band in front of you. That inspires me more.

How are your guitars typically set up? Do you set up guitars based on what each is used for?

(LEFT TO RIGHT) ’71 Fender Jazz Bass. This B.C. Rich Seagull II is a cross between the Eagle and Seagull.

I usually use S.I.T. .010-.046 gauge strings. Some guitars behave better tuned down a half-step; the only two tunings on my record are standard and down a half-step. I didn’t fool with open tunings. “Fate” is standard tuning with dropped D, and so is “No Friend Of Mine,” the song with Corabi. Gene’s and Nick’s songs are a half-step down, as are most of the songs where I use a Floyd Rose. Les Pauls can be tuned to anything, and the PRS guitars also behave in any key.

You have to use guitars that behave in the studio, because time is money. If they don’t play well at home, don’t take them to the studio.

I used .012s on the Martin and the Gibson Dove. The Gibson LG-1 probably has a custom set of .011s because I use that guitar for riffs.

What type of picks do you prefer?

They’re .73-mm gray nylon Dunlops with the grip. They’re kind of like the old Hercos. I don’t use anything else for guitar. For bass, I may use something a little heavier, or play with my fingers.

Talk about the vintage guitars you cherish most in your collection.

Well, there’s no question the ’53 Les Paul is very important. But I have a gorgeous 1960 ES-355 Stereo Varitone I used in a Kiss video, and on Revenge a little bit. It’s the only semi-hollow I owned for a very long time. Five or six years ago, when prices were going crazy, I read how much fun ES models were, so I found a ’65 ES-345 at Guitar Center in Hollywood – the one I mentioned recording with. Then I found its “sister” – a 335 with a Stereo Varitone that was virtually unplayed. Granted, ’65s aren’t as desirable as anything earlier because they had the trapeze tailpiece, I didn’t want to buy a guitar with issues or needing parts replaced. I didn’t have $20,000 to spend on a guitar, so I didn’t get one with a stop tail. But I found some that are cool collectibles and superb instruments. One is Ice Tea sunburst, the other is standard sunburst. I showed Norm (Harris) the ES-335 with the Stereo Varitone and he was impressed because it was in pristine condition and an unusual custom order. Then I got a ’61 ES-330 and later traded it for a mint ’63 330 in sunburst with nickel parts. I love those guitars. In 1990, I grabbed a wheat-color ’58 Les Paul Special that’s very clean with a fantastic neck and beautiful Brazilian-rosewood fingerboard.

I’ve always been a fan of Les Paul Juniors and have a pretty interesting ’56; it’s on the heavy side and has a two-piece body.

I have two ’83 Gibson Heritage Flying Vs that are really sweet – natural korina and ivory. I also have a black ’83 Moderne, which I took on tour with Kiss in the early ’90s.

I have a really cool  SG Junior I think is a ’64. I’ve been a fan of SG Specials since I grew up learning on one that I sold to a friend who brought it to a Kiss expo not long ago. I still can’t believe I sold that guitar. But I bought another one with all the right parts. The first had a Tune-O-Matic bridge and stop tailpiece I put on it. I used that guitar with my first band in ’74. I also still have the yellow ESP I played on Crazy Nights.

What about basses?

I have a really cool ’67 Gibson EB-3 I used on Carnival Of Souls, a beautiful ’65 Fender Jazz Bass I got from Norm with a really light rosewood fingerboard, and a really nice ’68 Olympic White P-Bass, but it’s yellowed and has a tortoise pickguard.

You’ve got some other notable B.C. Rich guitars, too…

Yes… a koa and regular standard Supreme Mockingbirds. One really unusual B.C. Rich I used with Union and maybe on my record a tiny bit is a white conversion model that’s kind of between the Eagle and Seagull. I think they called it a Seagull II and it’s probably from the late ’70s; it has diamond inlays and a big R on the headstock..

Of all your guitars, which is the most important for studio work?

The ’53 Les Paul.

Which are used most often onstage?

That would vary. A problem with stage guitars is that if I’m going to be up there for an hour and a half and I can only use one guitar, I prefer it to be under eight pounds. Unfortunately, that cuts out a lot of guitars. When I want only one, I have a really cool ESP Snapper with a humbucker and two single-coils. They don’t sell it in America, but it’s got a maple top and can do a lot of things. Sometimes, that’s a go-to guitar.

Other times, I take a PRS because I like a Les Paul sound but I don’t want to bring a Les Paul, and the McCarty has the coil-split switch.

I did get a very interesting Les Paul this year; it’s chambered and they didn’t put the finish on the top, but it’s tiger-striped, has two DiMarzios, only weighs about 7¹/4 pounds, and sounds very good live.

I have some other great ESPs and Les Pauls, but some are heavy.

Are there any instruments you’d like to add to your collection?

I would really like to get a Martin 000 – an 18 or 28. I’d prefer an older one, but it doesn’t have to be from the ’40s… something from the ’70s. And I’ve always dreamt of getting a Gibson J-200, even though I hate the jumbo body. But they’re beautiful guitars. I’d love a ’50s, but I’m not ready to spend that much. I always loved Hummingbirds, too.

What’s happening with Grand Funk Railroad?

This is my ninth year touring with them. The band is terrific and we take whatever crowd we have, whether it’s a sit-down casino crowd, a big fair crowd, or a classic-rock crowd, and we always bring them to their feet. People love it. And I love it! It’s a great gig!

Grand Funk plays mostly in the spring, summer, and fall. Things wind down by October. Now that we’re on a break, I’m really looking forward to promoting BK3.

What about other projects?

I’ll also be involved with Fantasy Camp, and I’m always looking for artists and projects to produce and co-write. I plan on making a couple of Kiss expo appearances, and I’ll probably get involved with some clinics, too, because I can do it as a one-man band in front of 200 people, and it’s an opportunity to expose people to the stuff on BK3.

I hope to collaborate with Corabi or maybe get involved with more stuff with Gene again.

I’ve got to admit, it’s always exciting. Just when I think there’s nothing going on, my phone rings or I’ll get an e-mail. I’m very fortunate that way. And people know if they’re going to get me involved with something, I’m going to do the best I can.

What is the possibility of Union being resurrected, or you and John working together in the future?

It’s really hard for us to go out and do something, but I would. John and I work together in a band called ESP – Eric Singer Project. We’re a glorified cover band, but there’s magic when Eric and I play together, and then there’s that energy from Union with John added. It’s a great combination. Chuck Garric from Alice Cooper’s band has been our bass player for the last three years. He’s a great guy, and loves doing different kinds of material; we’ll cover a Motörhead song just for him. For the Kiss fans, he can cover Gene’s stuff. We’ve put out a live CD from Japan and live DVD from Australia that are really good, and had a successful run of 13 shows last February. But we can only tour when schedules permit. It’s hard to coordinate, but I’d like to do more with them. I certainly want to be involved with any projects my friends would like to do.

This article originally appeared in VG April 2010 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Charlie Musselwhite photo: Rick Hadley.

In a career spanning 45 years, Charlie Musselwhite has taken the blues to places its never been – literally (playing every corner of the globe) and artistically (on his two dozen solo albums and backing such diverse artists as Tom Waits, INXS, Doc Watson, Bonnie Raitt, Eliades Ochoa, Eddie Vedder, the Blind Boys Of Alabama, the Kodo drummers of Japan, and Cyndi Lauper – in addition to blues greats like John Lee Hooker, Big Joe Williams, John Hammond, and Jimmy Witherspoon).

One of the greatest blues harmonica players in the history of the genre, he has occasionally shown his six-string talents on stage and on record – as with his latest CD, The Well (Alligator). His first all-originals album, it’s also his most personal – dealing with his years of alcoholism (“Dig The Pain”), his subsequent recovery (the title track, inspired by the rescue of Baby Jessica), and the 2005 murder of his mother (“Sad And Beautiful World,” featuring Mavis Staples).

Growing up in Memphis, Musselwhite got his first guitar – an f-hole Supertone acoustic – as a hand-me-down from his father, who played country music non-professionally. “I was 13, and I just wanted to play blues,” he recounts. “I remember the first time I made an E chord and then put my little finger down to make that E7 – it was like, ‘Yeah, that’s it!’”

Instead of the typical garage-band apprenticeship, Musselwhite and author/record producer George Mitchell scoured the Delta in Charlie’s 1950 Lincoln, looking for blues players. “George, who was my age, knew more about the history than I did. That’s how I met Fiddlin’ Joe Martin, who knew Will Shade.”

Still a teenager, Musselwhite befriended bluesmen 50 years his senior, like Shade (from the Memphis Jug Band) and Furry Lewis. But this was not some student/teacher, academic relationship. “I wanted to learn guitar, but I also enjoyed their friendship,” says Musselwhite. “Sometimes we’d just sit around and listen to the ballgame on the radio. I wasn’t plying them with questions or ‘show me this, show me that.’ I actually wish I had asked more questions like, ‘Who did you learn from?’ But I just took it as it came. They were funny, and I could drink with them, and I was interested in the girls who hung around there. I eventually became really good friends with Furry. Sometimes I’d end up spending the night at his place if I got too tipsy.”

Moving to Chicago after high school, Musselwhite’s harp playing soon reflected his urban surroundings, but his guitar playing remained rooted in country blues – vividly illustrated on 2003′s Darkest Hour (Henrietta Records). “Will Shade, Furry Lewis, and also Memphis Willie B. – Willie Borum – formed the foundation of everything I still play today,” he explains. “When I got to Chicago, there were tons of guitar players and not many harmonica players. I started getting jobs on harmonica, so I focused on that, and my guitar playing just sort of leveled off where I was at when I left Memphis.”

Two guitar influences in Chicago were John Lee Granderson and Big Joe Williams, whose backup band was sometimes “Little Mike and Memphis Charlie” – a.k.a. Michael Bloomfield (in this case, on piano) and Musselwhite. “For a short time, Joe and I lived in the basement of the Jazz Record Mart and then behind Bill Chavers’ Old Wells Record Shop. John was really an amazing guitar player, though it’s not evident from anything he left on record. He was a real interesting guy, and wanted to show me stuff on guitar. He also tried to show me how to play in the key of H,” he laughs. “He went into a lengthy explanation of why it couldn’t be any key but H.”

In recent years, Musselwhite’s main guitar was a Gibson Nighthawk (“has a great tone for blues”), before he found his ultimate six-string. “I remember Luther Tucker talking about playing a ‘Strat’ with Little Walter – meaning a Harmony Stratotone, not a Fender Stratocaster,” he details. “John Hammond got a reissue and so did Tom Waits. What I liked about it was that fat neck. I felt like I could really dig into it, and it just seemed so perfect for blues – the way it felt and sounded. Smokey Hormel and Marc Ribot both had old ones, and Marc said, ‘You know, it’s really the only guitar worth having.’ Coincidentally, a few days later, Blewett Thomas, an old friend who was friends with Big Joe Williams, told me there was one [for sale] cheap. So I snapped it up.”

He plugs the guitar straight into his amp of choice. “I like the red-knob Fender called The Twin. Most people hate that amp. I don’t know why they go on about how it has such a terrible tone. It’s got a killer tone. It’s heavy – it’s a bear to carry around – but it’s got tone to spare.”

The guitarists Musselwhite has employed on bandstands and in the studio – from Tucker and Bloomfield to Louis Myers, Robben Ford, Fenton Robinson, Freddie Roulette, Junior Watson, Charlie Sexton, Ben Harper, and (on The Well) Dave Gonzalez – are as varied as they are impressive. But Musselwhite always lets them be themselves, as long as they bring taste and excitement and are playing from the heart. “Gonzalez is a great example,” he offers. “Whatever he plays – and he can play just about any style – it’s with consummate taste. Never overplays; it’s never ‘Look at what I’m doing’ – or how fast or clever he is. Instead of showing off your technique, you use technique to support the music. Some people forget about the music, and it’s all about technique. I’ve got no use for that.”

Just as he has nurtured a new generation of blues players, like Kid Andersen and Matt Stubbs, the Blues Hall Of Fame inductee is a direct link to music going back a century. “I just know that when Will Shade was a kid on Beale Street, an old man taught him guitar. The first tune Will learned from that man was the first tune he taught me. So that’s a link. I also soaked up his harp playing, and so did Walter Horton. Then in Chicago, I was soaking up more from Walter – and we’d had the same teacher.”

This article originally appeared in VG December 2010 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Photo: Glenn Gottlieb.

Progressive-rock icons Yes are still going strong after more than 40 years of recording and performing. Throughout their reign as one of the most influential rock bands of all time, having sold more than 50 million albums worldwide, they’ve endured personnel changes as well as stylistic changes.

The current incarnation includes Benoit David on vocals, Steve Howe on guitar, Chris Squire on bass, Alan White on drums, and Oliver Wakeman on keyboards. Their latest studio album, Fly From Here, was released in 2011, while In The Present – Live From Lyon documents their current live set. VG caught up with Howe to talk guitars, and find out how that new singer is working out.

Are you happy with the way Live From Lyon turned out?
I’m pretty happy. We found Karl Groom to mix it for us, and he did a great job. We went through his mixes, made some comments, then I popped in and did the mastering for about four hours with the mastering people. It sounded good and we pretty much kept the set as is. It nicely sums up a whole era. That was at the end of two years with that lineup. Live From Lyon helps justify and explain where we’ve been, and it was great.

Did you do anything different with your guitar sound compared to previous tours?
Not really. In 2007 I started using Line 6 amps, and I’m playing a Gibson ES-175 and a Gibson Stereo for the Close To The Edge material. The only time I play a Line 6 guitar is when I’m playing an acoustic or sitar part within a song. When I play an acoustic solo piece, it’s always on a Martin.

Which Line 6 amp are you currently using?
I’m using the Line 6 Bogner with the Pod HD500. It’s a hell of a thing. It does everything and more that the old Vetta II amp was doing. All the programming is in the pedalboard and I’ve got two of them. I can plug it into an amp and not change anything except the volume. When I play into a Bogner I’m only using the amp section, not the preamp, because all the sounds are in the pedalboard.

There are things that are better and things that aren’t really as good. I think it takes awhile because I’m pretty fussy and have good ears, and I know what I hear is actually what I’m hearing. When I programmed it, I was really happy. I think I was in a nice environment. It was adding some of the warmth that I like.

What is your #1 guitar?
The ’64 Gibson 175D I bought in ’64 is my best guitar. There’s no doubt about that. That’s going to mainly stay in the U.K. I’ll use it onstage in the U.K., but when I leave the country, there’s so many hassles with it staying with me permanently, because it has to. Then I use a 175D Steve Howe Model. It’s customized with a third pickup in the middle to simulate the Switchmaster guitar. I really like that guitar, and I’m pretty much using it all the time when I’m abroad.

Which one sounds better?
When you play a guitar for 45 years, it’s going to sound better (laughs)!

Over the last few years, Benoit David has made a seemingly seamless transition as your vocalist.
That’s right. The recordings are a very good example of really how far we’ve gotten going with this. He’s been absolutely amazing. He does some rhythm guitar and some percussion, and he’s a good all-arounder.

Originally, he was brought in because Jon Anderson had respiratory problems and couldn’t tour. Since then, he’s recovered. Do you see a time when Jon Anderson will return to the band?
Jon and Rick (Wakeman) don’t want to tour in the way that we do. It’s too strenuous, too intense, and a lot to do. Also, Jon wanted to change the keys in most of the songs and we don’t want to do that. There are quite a few other issues, as well. So when he got ill, we got Benoit in to start a new era of Yes. We were going to be assertive and move forward, and as it happened, the band and Jon accepted that there was a split. This was a change in direction. We were going off here, and he was going to go off there, and we would get on with our lives.

That does happen sometimes, and it has. Each of us wishes we can all do well in this world. I wouldn’t like to be quoted as saying that we won’t get together again, but we all have to move on. That doesn’t mean to say that I’m going to be playing in Yes when I’m 70 (laughs)! There are other musical ventures I know I’m destined for, but Yes is still very important.

Are there any new projects in the future with Asia?
Yes. We’re starting a third reunion. We may return to the stage and do some work on an album, and we’ll be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the fourth album.

On January 21, I’m releasing my solo album, Time, on Warner Classic. It’s pretty exciting because it’s been a team project with writers and orchestrators and getting different ideas. It has taken four years and it’s a bit of a milestone because there are no drums. I play a mixture of traditional classical pieces with some interesting interpretations. It’s got a nice continuity and I’m really excited about it.

Why is this Hot Tuna’s first studio album in 20 years?
It’s a valid question, and it presupposes that we try to order our lives in a predictable way. I guess we just weren’t ready yet. But I did two CDs with Red House and said, “What about a Hot Tuna project?” They jumped at it. I got to use Larry Campbell again as a producer and as a co-player and co-writer, and we got to do it at Levon Helm’s place. So in a way, it was a perfect storm of creativity.

There are a lot of talented people in this business, but to say Larry is a multi-instrumentalist doesn’t begin to tell you what this man brings to the table. Yes, he plays each instrument as if it were his only instrument, but as a producer, he puts himself into your band, and I don’t think it’s something he has to make himself do. In the studio, his musical sensibilities are so unbelievable, you just trust him.

What was your electric setup on the CD?
I have a Gibson LP-295 I used on the electric stuff where I was fingerpicking, I used a Gibson Chet Atkins SST I’ve had a long time. I have a ’67 Fender Deluxe – which is not vintage to me, because I bought it new; it’s just old. I also used a Louis Electric 2×12, which is what I use onstage. On “Angel Of Darkness” I used a ’50s Bogan PA amp that’s been made into a guitar amp, and on “Children Of Zion” I used my SST through a ’30s Oahu steel guitar amp.
Recently, Gibson used an Airplane song, “Volunteers,” for its new Firebird X, so I thought, “I’ve got to have one of those.” Well, they’re real expensive, and I’m not interested in a modeling guitar. But Gibson gave me a new Les PaulStandard, and I love it so much I would have paid for it.

What acoustics did you use on the CD?
I used the Jorma M-30 that Martin makes. But since this is Vintage Guitar, I have to add that I still have my ’59 Gibson J-50 I bought new for a hundred bucks at Pop’s Music Store in Dayton, Ohio – which sort of defined my guitar playing life for so many years. I don’t have any of the old electric guitars – they’re long gone – but I’ve got that J-50. It’s sort of fragile in its old age, but it’s still a great-sounding guitar.

What do you think constitutes a psychedelic guitar player?
When I came into playing with the Airplane, I’d played in a band with Jack in high school and stuff, but I thought of my guitar as an amplified guitar, not an electric guitar. We didn’t use any of the tricks we’ve all come to take for granted. So it was kind of like on-the-job learning. I’d really never played with a band and came in knowing almost nothing. Then we just sort of listened to what was going on and kind of followed the music. I can’t say that I “architected” anything, but I think if you’re given a great song to play with, and everybody else is playing the song, you’re totally free to go a lot of different places. For a guy like me, whose style is uncluttered by knowing Albert King or B.B. King licks or any of that stuff, I honestly just played what I felt and got lucky. If you listen to the solos on “Somebody To Love” and “White Rabbit,” I mean, I’d never played in F# before in my life! Surrealistic Pillow was recorded on four-track, no noise reduction. So you couldn’t keep doing overdubs because the tape sound would degrade.

When I got into electric guitar, Mike Bloomfield was a gatekeeper for me in the beginning. I’d never seen anybody play the guitar like that. He sort of showed me how to do stuff and demystified that overdriven sound. And there was an Ike & Tina Turner album with a song called “If You Can Hully Gully (I Can Hully Gully Too)” with a guitar solo that’s insane. Then there was Eric Clapton – the John Mayall stuff and the Cream stuff. He opened so many doors, too. When I got to know him a little, I thought it was funny that the Cream stuff wasn’t his favorite music. I thought they were brilliant. I had never heard an electric band so righteously take these acoustic blues things and turn them into electric stuff without being stupid or silly – just taking them to that level. In my opinion, nobody else has done it as well. I’d heard all the originals of those songs, and they captured the essence of what they needed to capture and turned it into their thing.

What’s it like playing with Jack Casady?
Jack is my oldest buddy, obviously. We’ve been playing together since ’58. We’ve always respected each other as artists and as men, and we read each other really well. He just listens to what’s going on and knows what is needed. When I do solo stuff, I have a collection of building blocks, and I move around this way and that way. It’s kind of like a Rubik’s cube until you get what you want. But Jack’s solos every night are so different. It’s like, “Where is this stuff coming from?” It’s a really deep well.
Anybody playing in a band will appreciate this: Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen and Hot Tuna have never had a band meeting. I think that has a lot to do with why we’re still buddies. We just listen to each other.

Next month, we’ll bring a second helping of Tuna, with Casady

This article originally appeared in VG August 2011 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Isaak working on his new album at Sun Studios, surrounded by images – and the vibe – of some of his most vital musical heroes.

Most pop-music fans became aware of Chris Isaak through his 1991 hit “Wicked Game” and its uber-high-profile video, directed by famed photographer Herb Ritts and featuring the singer/guitarist gettin’ all From Here to Eternity with supermodel Helena Christensen. Musically, the moody track – with Calvin Wilsey’s memorable reverb-infused guitar lick – not only put Isaak on the pop-music map, but kept him there perpetually via “appearances” in film and on TV programs and commercials. With its basic, brushed-snare-drum beat, laid-back melody, clean single-note/arpeggiated-chord guitar solo (rendered via Fender Stratocaster and a blackface amp with reverb), and classic torch vocals, the song had a deep throwback feel. But for Isaak, it was simply true to form, and reflected the deep influence of early rock-and-roll performers, many of whom emerged from Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios in the 1950s. Isaak’s new album, Beyond the Sun, moves from being simply influenced by his predecessors to a straight-up tribute, spurred by a comment Phillips made in an interview more than a decade ago. Asked by Oxford American if any contemporary recording artists grabbed his attention, Phillips replied, “I don’t keep up with the business like I used to. But I love to listen to Chris Isaak. He’s very talented, and his music is so damned honest. It’s incredible.” Isaak was blown away by such praise from a man he idolized, and he calls Beyond the Sun – which was recorded at Sun – a “labor of love.” The affection traces to his childhood, when he and his brother became obsessed with music being made by Phillips and the artists he mentored. Isaak took the phone call from VG as he ran through a few chords on a guitar. The first question was obvious…

What are you strumming on?

Ummm, it’s a “Los Lauriars” or something – a half-size guitar a little bigger than a baritone ukulele… nylon-string. I got it years ago when I traveled all the time, and I’d put it in the overhead or in the back of the van or whatever. I actually have a nicer one now – a half-pint version of a Gibson J-200 made in the ’60s. The J-200 I play onstage has my name across the top in mother of toilet seat (pearloid), and I wanted the little guitar to have the same thing – they look like father and son! Lefty Frissell did something like that, but on a pink pickguard, which was really cool. I want to do that sometime. And I’ve seen a version of Johnny Cash inlaid on the neck, but I’d never fool with the neck. When they put me in a box or something, then somebody can pry my letters off and keep playing (laughs)!

Beyond The Sun is an ode to some of the music you heard as a child, much of which was recorded at Sun Records in Memphis. What prompted you?

The songs I picked were all by artists who got their start at Sun, recording for Sam Phillips, the famed producer who worked with Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis… He also recorded guys like B.B. King and Howlin’ Wolf. That’s a great bunch to pick from, and on the album I do some songs they recorded at Sun and some stuff they did later, like Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Great Balls of Fire” and later Elvis stuff like “It’s Now or Never.” Some people don’t know it, but Sun is really a simple studio. Like you walk in and the first 10 feet is a room to keep the sound off the street; that’s the office. Then there’s another door, and then there’s like a 25-by-20 room with a high ceiling – that’s the studio. And in the back is a little room just big enough to swing a cat – that’s the control room. It’s just awesome.

What do you recall about your earliest exposure to music?

I remember as a kid, my older brother putting records on our player – one of those that looked like a little suitcase, with two little speakers about the size of a Kleenex box. It was funky-sounding, but we thought we were very hi-fi, because it played in stereo! My brother would put on Jerry Lee Lewis rock-and-roll songs before we went to school. My parents had a great record collection – Johnny Cash, a bunch of Elvis. In fact, the first thing I did when I finished this record was take a mock-up of the artwork, put the album inside, and take it to my parents, because it was a thank-you to them. They never said to me, “Hey, get a real job.” Maybe because we came from a funky enough background – we didn’t have connections or money or anything like that, so it wasn’t like we were gonna go downhill! It wasn’t like, “Why aren’t you going to be a lawyer like your father?” It was like “Hey, good for you, you’re staying out of jail…” (laughs)!

Nowhere to go but up?

You know, I think my parents were really proud that I went to college, got a scholarship, and was boxing as a light heavyweight for Aoyama Gakuin University, in Tokyo. When I was over there, I discovered another Sun sessions album; I went, “This what I want to do. I want to sing.” I didn’t know at the time, if you had asked me, “Are you gonna become famous? Are you gonna travel the world?,” I would have looked at you like, “Uh, yeahhh.”

Isaak early in his career with his Silvertone model 1384 guitar (and 1484 amp in the background).

Were you comfortable with your singing voice?

It wasn’t a matter if I thought I was good or not. It was more like… (chuckles) it was like sex; it didn’t matter, it was just so much fun. And I’d sing all the time. Actually, my older brother was better; people would always say, “You can sing good, but your brother really can sing.” So it was competitive, you know?

What about guitars?

My first guitar was a Checkmate, and I remember it well; it was a really cheesy nylon-string, and on the headstock was a piece of metal, stamped and screwed on – it looked like the knight chess piece. I had that guitar for years, then after I got a better one, I lent it to my friend, Anthony Franks. He was a great guy, but he lost it! I went, “Lesson learned.” Never lend a guitar. You lend it, it’s gone. Anthony’s a great guy, and a straight arrow.

Has he been apologizing ever since?

Nah. We were kids. You borrow stuff and people move, things change.

What was your next guitar?

I graduated to a much better guitar – a Silvertone! I got the hollowbody one, which I still have. It came with futuristic-looking pickups, a single cutaway, not real big and fat… it’s kind of like the precursor to the Gretsch 6120. I went, “Wow! Now I’m getting professional.”

How old were you at the time?

Probably 19.

What kind of music were you playing?

Well, on guitar, it was funny because… You know, I always loved this music and really, it’s easy for me to sing that style – it comes naturally. And later, when I read about the people those Sun Records artists were listening to at the time, in some odd way they were the same ones I listened to growing up – Hank Williams, Earnest Tubb, Gene Autry – guys from three generations back. And later, when I heard Jerry Lee Lewis, I’d go, “I hear some Gene Autry in it.” Or I’d hear a song by Elvis and go, “Oh, that’s a Hank Snow song.” When I started out, I thought, “Man, if I could be as big as Hank Snow…” I still wish I could be as good as Hank Snow or Lefty Frissell. Then, when I heard Elvis from his Sun sessions, I went, “Wow! This put a little more youth into Hank’s stuff.” It had a little more kick – took it off the farm and brought it to the city a little. And then there’s the guitar playing by Scotty Moore, who I believe should get paid for every record. Without Scotty Moore, we’d all be sweeping streets (laughs)!

All of your Sun heroes had heavy-hitter guitar players. Do you have favorites amongst them?

Oh, yeah. For example, my favorite guitar players ever were represented very well on Beyond The Sun. Scotty Moore, of course, who you just can’t give enough credit to – without Scotty, you might not have Sam Phillips. What if Elvis had walked into a different studio with different people – maybe somewhere that wouldn’t have seen the talent and maybe said, “Hey, let’s put a string section behind this kid and we’ll have a Southern Dean Martin.” And they would have cut two or three albums, maybe had a regional hit. You know what I mean? But when you add Scotty Moore with all those riffs, it was obviously something new. Scotty’s a big part of it. Elvis was part of a band, it wasn’t just him. He had a great producer and a great guitar player. I don’t know what the odds are for that. I’ve been lucky, and I’ll take my life over Elvis’. I’ve lived longer, I’ve had great friends, and my band is great – I’ve been with them for 26 years and they’re really fun guys. But when a guy walks into a studio and the first guy you see says, “Here’s your producer, Sam Phillips. Here’s your guitar player, Scotty Moore. Bill Black on bass.” You just go, “Huh?!” That’s what you call lightning striking.

A whole lotta luck.

All at one time!

Luther Perkins and Johnny Cash had a similar story…

Oh, I love Luther Perkins (sings “I’m all alone, alone and blue. I’ve go no one to tell my troubles to.”) And all of a sudden he stops the instruments and goes, “Key of A, Luther.” I’m dying! And there’s another one for Sam Phillips; so many guys would have walked in with that and said, “We want the singer, but let’s use our session guys.” And we would’ve lost the coolness of his sound. I mean, his records are so cool because they’re so simple. There was another great player represented on this record, and he actually sat in and gave us some insight on some of the songs – Roland Janes. It was so much fun to hang with him; he’s hilarious – a gentleman and a really nice guy. He played on all those Jerry Lee Lewis records; think about being the guitar player with Jerry Lee Lewis – maybe the world’s best piano player. That’s a hard road, you know what I mean? Yet, he doesn’t have a bit of ego in him. He’s smart, and his choices on the guitar are like (sighs)… My god! I was talking to James Burton, and I said, “James, why don’t you teach me somethin’?” He goes, “I’ll teach ya somethin’. When in doubt, play out,” (laughs)! And it’s hilarious, but it’s true. And Roland is the guy who has enough ego control that he doesn’t start endlessly noodling. He lets the song breathe. And he plays understated. Yet you listen to him play, and there’s such passion. It’s so perfect. And nobody sounds like him. Man, he plays some stuff. I told Hershel Yatovitz, my guitar player, who’s damn good, “I listen, but I can’t figure out what he’s doing.” Hershel goes, “I can figure out what he’s doin’, but I can’t do it.” It’s his feel – so sophisticated it sounds simple. But it isn’t. Anyway, Roland was there. And when I introduced Hershel to him, I said, “Uh, Hershel… meet Roland Janes,” and his eyes went wide and he said, “Oh, my god. I’m sorry, but I’ve been hearing your name a million times – every time we play something, he goes, you gotta listen to Roland Janes.” And he was right – I’d always told him that!

You’ve worked with Hershel for what, 15 years?

A long time. I mean, since the Dead Sea was sick! He was clean-shaven when he started!

What does he bring to your music?

He is the man for the job in this band. Nobody could do what he does. If you think about what we do live; I might ask him one minute to play, “Forgot to Remember to Forget,” where he’ll be comping a part kind of like Scotty Moore, then I’ll ask him to play a part he made up, then I’ll ask him on the next song to be jammin’ on something we’re making up that night, then I’ll ask him to play something from a record we did 15 or 16 years ago. And they have a lot of different sounds. Most guitar players have one sound or thing, but Hershel can play a lot of styles, with lot of different sounds. He’s got his own style, which I like very much – it’s very pretty. He’s a pretty, melodic player. And he’s a good showman, too. On top of all that, if I tell Hershel, “I wrote this song, and I want to record it tomorrow. Can you come up with a part tonight?,” it’s done. But sometimes what blows my mind is, I’ll say, “Hey, listen to this record. What’s this guy playing? Can you learn that?” Twenty minutes later, he’ll play it for me, flawlessly. What might take me all night to learn, Hershel learns in 10 seconds. I played with Michelle Branch on this Buddy Holly special; I spent all night learning the riff for (sings) “Heartbeat, why do you….” And I wasn’t gonna play it, but I just wanted to see if I could learn it, right? It took me a long time; I’m a lousy guitar player. Well, I like to play rhythm, that’s my thing. I play leads a couple times a night because it’s so different. Anyway, it took me all night, but Hershel learned it in seconds.

Isaak with his preferred guitar – a Gibson J-200.

Then, at the show, Waddy Wachtel was the guitar player that night, and Waddy and I played together – Waddy is so good. Anyway, we started to play and I said, “No, Waddy. Play it like the record.” And he goes, “Chris, I learned 20 songs today…” I go, “Wait, I know it.” And I played it for him, and I got lucky and played it right. That never happens (laughs)! When I finished, I looked around, because everybody in the band stopped while I was playing the riff, and Waddy’s listening; I said, “Did anybody film that? Me teaching Waddy Wachtel something.” He laughed. Really, though, I couldn’t carry one of his strings. He’s amazing.

Do you have a favorite guitar amongst those you play regularly?

Yeah, Gibson J-200. My house is like the Stevie Ray Vaughan video for “Cold Shot,” where his girlfriend would take his guitar away, but he’d pull out another one. There was a guitar behind the couch, behind the door, under the chair… The first time I saw that, I laughed and said, “That’s my house!” My ex used to say, “How come you got a guitar everywhere?” And I said, “You never know when you might want to play one!” (laughs). But the J-200 is ubiquitous. I don’t think there’s a finer guitar; Gibson guitars are my favorite, by far. The acoustics… I’ve sang with Martins and they’re nice – they’re brighter – but a Gibson is warm from top to bottom, a big, full sound. To me, it’s just thrilling. I sit in my hallway or on the stairway because there’s good echo, and sing with the J-200. It’s like I’m in heaven.

How about electric guitars? Do you have any that you like better than others?

I played a little show once – I think it was for iTunes – where they said, “Bring a guitar.” I thought, “I’ll bring an electric.” So I brought a funky little Silvertone amp and a little echo box, with my blond ’56 Super 400 (laughs)! Talk about overkill! People are looking at me like, “Uh huh… That’s a nice guitar.” I go, “Yes, it is. You have no idea!” Some people think you shouldn’t play that sort of stuff outside the house. But you know, I’m never going to sell this stuff. And it only comes out boots first!

How many ’50s and ’60s guitars do you have?

My guitar collection isn’t that big, money-wise. I’m not somebody who has them all lined up goes, “This is my blond ’49, this is my…” They’re not all organized and they’re not all perfect. If you took all my guitars there’s probably not that expensive of a collection. ’Cause I’ll have guitars in there that… I’ve got a red Hagstrom from the ’60s. And it’s funky, but it’s a great sound for certain things. I’ve got an Italian guitar with a plastic body, and it’s got microphonic pickups. My bass player gave it to me; he said, “I know you like these kind of things.” It was kind of a joke, but of course I brought it to the studio and recorded with it and went, “Oh my god, it doesn’t sound like anything else you’ve heard. I like this!” Making the new album, Hershel was playing the Super 400 for a lot of the Scotty kind of stuff, and at one point we were playing an old blues tune and man, it sounded good. But it didn’t sound funky enough. But there was this little practice guitar laying in the studio that people would use to pose for pictures or write their name on. It had funky strings, it wasn’t intonated very well, and the nut was rattling and everything else. I said, “Play this track on that one.” He picked it up and he goes, “But it’s out of tune, and it rattles.” I go, “Perfect!” And of course, because his playing is so good and that guitar was so bad, together it sounds like all those blues guys. Those guys were playing million-dollar riffs on $20 guitars! Me, not being that great a player, I’ll take a great guitar like the Gibsons. Plus, when you’re at home playing a Hagstrom and it slips out of tune, it’s no big deal. You just tune it and keep going. But when you’re onstage… that’s a problem. There’s a reason I’m playing a Gibson through a Fender blackface Twin. It’s like driving a Chevy – you can get parts anywhere, and it always starts. And I always liked Gretsch guitars, but onstage, they didn’t hold up as well for me.

They keep you a little busier…

Yes. Brian Setzer gave me a Gretsch, it was just beautiful – and what a class act he is. I’ll never play it as good as he does, but he cracked me up because he’s so into it – such a guitarhead, and motorhead. He said, “Yeah, these are good ones because the top of this guitar is only this thick, they used to make them thicker, but this one’s thin.” I’m goin’, “Yeah, okay… It’s red!” (laughs) and I like it. It sure is nice, Brian!

This article originally appeared in VG January 2012 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Tom Johnston and Patrick Simmons.

American music rarely is more pure than when it comes from the minds, hands, and mouths of the Doobie Brothers.

A rare mix of talent, the Doobies have, since their inception, been fronted by two musicians with unique voices and distinct guitar styles, each of which has driven the band’s sound from Tom Johnston’s huge lick and vocals on “China Grove” to Pat Simmons’ fingerpicked turn on “Black Water.” Truly, the Doobies’ sound encompasses many influences, yet defies categorization. It is what it is – rock and roll.

And few bands, regardless of whatever success they achieve, survive four decades. But the Doobies have, and earlier this year released their 13th album. Replete with the vocal harmonies, notable guitar tones, and simple-yet-elegant arrangements and production that have earned it a huge and enduring following, it was welcomed by fans and a broader pop-music audience.

The Recording Industry Association of America (R.I.A.A.) says the Doobie Brothers have sold more than 30 million albums since 1970. And while numbers are swell, the Doobies are more about riffs, hooks, and songs that have become ingrained in the American musical consciousness.

We recently spoke with Tom Johnston and Pat Simmons, two of the band’s founders and artistic guides.

Tom Johnston
His parents were Dixieland buffs; his father a devout listener and his mother a pianist who, every so often, would entertain the family by playing a ditty or two. The influence helped tune his ears to music, but its impact paled compared to the day his brother brought home records by Little Richard and Bo Diddley. Less than 10 years old at the time, the sounds emanating from the turntable truly rocked his world.

Did those Little Richard and Bo Diddley songs ultimately inspire you to pick up guitar?
Well, Little Richard knocked everybody back. I like Elvis Presley, but I don’t think he was the guy. I also like Jerry Lee Lewis and Bo Diddley, but don’t really consider Bo rock and roll – he’s more blues and had his own rhythm section, which nobody else was doing. So when I picked up a guitar, that’s what it was all about, basically (laughs)! But Freddie King and Jimmy Reed got me to start playing in ernest.

What was your first guitar?
It was a broken archback Harmony with three strings missing (laughs)!

Could you even form chords on it?
I didn’t learn any chords, no. But I learned to play Jimmy Reed riffs like “Big Boss Man” and “Take Out Some Insurance,” then I got the rest of the strings and started playing other stuff. I don’t even think I learned a barre chord until I got a single-pickup Kay about a year and a half later. That was my first decent guitar.

Did you take lessons?
No, I learned everything by ear and experimentation, mostly because I played clarinet and saxophone through my freshman year of high school. The saxophone was cool, but I absolutely loathed the clarinet. At the end of freshman year, I packed that thing up, stuck it in the closet, and told my parents, “I’m not gonna play this damn thing again. That’s it!”

So guitar became my sole focus for expressing myself, and by the time I was 15 I’d learned how to play a barre chord thanks to a friend named Bill Crenshaw. I took it from there and learned by listening to blues players starting with Freddie King. By the eighth grade, I knew how to play “Hideaway,” which you had to do if you wanted to play in a band! Then I moved on to B.B. and then Albert King, who’s the most lyrical electrical blues player I’ve ever heard.

So, your bands were mostly playing blues?
Blues and R&B. I was also a complete nut for Little Richard and a huge James Brown fan – still am. I saw him in 1962, after Live at the Apollo came out, and it was a life-altering experience – beyond my comprehension that somebody could move like he did, and all the stuff – dropping on his knees and a guy throwing a cape on him. It was something else for a white boy from Visalia!

(LEFT TO RIGHT) Johnston’s mid-’50s Fender Stratocaster has been in his collection since the ’70s.
This 1970 Deluxe has been Johnston’s primary Les Paul for 40 years.
This 2008 PRS Custom 24 is a touring backup for Johnston’s primary PRS. This ’09 PRS 25th Anniversary Custom 24 is Johnston’s primary touring guitar.It has a Modern Eagle inlay on the headstock and 57/08 pickups. Tom Johnston/guitars photos: Tyler Habrecht.

Which of your early bands came closest to being “real?” Was it Pud?
Pud was kind of a transformational band. One week, we’d play power-trio stuff like Cream or Mountain, and the next we’d be playing soul with background singers and a horn section. It was all over the map, with different players every week except for John Hartman and myself. It’s amazing how much happened in a short period – how many bands, how many gigs, how many musicians I met. It all happened while I was an art major at San Jose State and wound up living at 285 South 12th Street, which was kind of a musical center for San Jose. It didn’t matter if they played B-3 or drums, guitar, bass, or horns, they all ended up in our basement; John and I lived in a house for about four years, and once Dave Shogren joined us, we had the nucleus of the original Doobie Brothers.

What do you remember about meeting Pat Simmons?
I was playing with Skip Spence, who was one of the members of Moby Grape; Skip introduced me to John Hartman, and one night, Skip, myself, John, and eiteher Greg Murphy or Dave Shogren – I don’t remember which – played a show with Pat, who at the time was also playing with a guy named Peter Grant, who played banjo… Pat played acoustic. And we were knocked out by how good they were. Pat is an incredible fingerpicker, and they were playing folk/blues type stuff, and some bluegrass. We were playing rock and roll. So it was an interesting evening. Afterward, we asked Pat to come over and jam. He did a few times before we asked him, “Would you like to start a band?”

So, did the Doobies then have a permanent lineup?
Yeah, but when we started, we didn’t have a name until we had to play a gig one night. We were saying, “This sorta sucks… we need to think of a name.” Keith Rosen, who was my roommate in the house, suggested we call ourselves the Doobie Brothers. We said, “That’s stupid!” (laughs), but we didn’t have anything else, so we used it.

And why, pray tell, did he suggest that one?
Well, because of the lifestyle in the house (laughs)! Back then, we used to tell people we got the name from watching “Romper Room,” but I don’t think anybody bought it!

What are some of your fondest memories from the early days of the Doobies?
A lot of the music made in the basement. Skip was always around; we’d spend hours practicing and writing. Pat would write a song and I’d write a song, and we’d sit with the other two guys and work them out. We played with no intention to get into the music business as a profession. I studied graphic design in college, and that’s what I planned on doing. But Skip got us into Pacific Studios, where we did our first demo, which was sent to Warner Brothers, and on the strength of that demo, the band got signed. That’s when everything started moving forward. Until then, we played shows around the Bay area, every place we could, sometimes two or three shows a night, from San Jose to as far as Fremont. And I’d have to say some of the shows were absolutely part of that era and what was happening in the South Bay area only at the time. A great example would be the Chateau Liberté up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which was truly one of the wildest places I’ve ever played with a combination of “mountain people,” Hell’s Angels, and students.

You and Pat were the songwriters in the band. Was that by design, or just sort of organic?
That’s just the way it was. We basically wrote whatever came to mind, and and brought it to our rehearsals to work up. I was playing a lot of acoustic guitar at that time, which helped me come up with my rhythm style; I tried to figure out how to play guitar and drums at the same time on the one instrument, so that’s what my “chucka chucka” thing is all about. All the rhythm structures behind “Long Train Runnin’” and “Listen to the Music” were sort of written on an acoustic guitar, then I applied them to electric. Pat was writing both pickin’-style stuff and straightforward rock tunes. Then we’d figure out complementary guitar parts, harmonies, and lead-guitar parts for each tune, along with drum and bass parts.

Did the band set out to write radio hits?
We mostly weren’t thinking that far ahead in those days… well, John was, but the rest of us were content. We were having a hell of a good time, first of all, and that was a large part of it – we were having a lot of fun. We really enjoyed playing and some of the places we played were just flat nuts. So it was very entertaining! We were entertaining people, but we were being just as entertained by the people who were watching as they were being entertained by us playing!

Places like the Chateau Liberté, for instance, where we had what we used to call “mountain people,” combined with hippies, combined with college students, combined with Hell’s Angels. It made for a really interesting crowd. And everybody was pretty bombed most of the time, as I recall… I’m talking about the crowd here – the band might have been stoned, but the people we were playing for were gone. It was always wild.

Were the Doobies alone in having that sort of mass appeal to various audiences?
No, not at the Chateau. So many people played out there – Hot Tuna, Mountain Current, Chris Raimey, and a lot of others. It started gaining a better reputation when Hot Tuna played there.

What do you remember about the band picking up steam in terms of popularity beyond California?
Well, because the first album didn’t have much success, the thing that got us going was “Listen to the Music,” which was on our second album, Toulouse Street.

What do you recall about writing your first hit, “Listen to the Music”?
I was sitting in my bedroom, banging on acoustic, and I called [producer Ted Templeman] at three in the morning with chord changes to that song pretty much finished. I even had a lyric idea, which was unusual for me – lyrics were always the last things I did, and I think I came up with a lot of it all at once.

And when did you first hear it on the radio?
I remember first hearing it in my Volkswagen – we were pretty much living on foodstamps and brown rice, paying 40 bucks a month rent and playing as many gigs as we could. But when that song hit, we started getting a little bit more money for gigs, started playing organized shows, and started becoming a professional unit. Then “Jesus Is Just Alright” came out, then “Rockin’ Down the Highway,” both from Touluse Street. And then The Captain and Me came out the next year and had “China Grove” and “Long Train Runnin,’” which was a jam song we played every night even though we hadn’t written words to it – I’d make them up every night and the song would take on the names of “Rosey Pig Mosley” or “Parliament” or whatever the heck else! I finally wrote actual words to it. I finally wrote words in Amigo Studios in L.A. after the track was completely done.

When you write a song it, do you hear a melody in your head first?
Sometimes it’s the chord progression or a rhythm structure and chord progression. I’m kind of a rhythm guy, so I always write with that part in mind. But about 15 years ago, I started writing songs using computer software, which allowed me to go places I never could when I was just writing on a guitar or piano, where you’ve got chord changes and the rhythm idea, then you go into the studio and work up parts for the song – bass, drums, Pat’s part… This allowed me to flesh-out the song with rhythm and lead guitars, keyboards, lead and backround vocals, B-3 parts, any string or horn ideas, and drum loops. It’s a complete widening of the writing process.

For our new album, I actually wrote three songs on keyboards, and the rest were on guitar… one on slide guitar, which was the first time I’ve written on slide.

What do you remember about writing “China Grove”?
“China Grove” was also written in my bedroom on 12th Street, and involved another early-morning call to Ted. I came up with the chords – the bow bow… I didn’t have the repeat on the opening chords – the Echoplex came later, in the studio. But I grabbed John, who was asleep – he wasn’t real happy about it (laughs) – and I said, “Let’s go downstairs, now!” I plugged into the amp and started slammin’. He dug it, I dug it. So we went in the studio with the chord changes and the rhythm structure, and I really owe Billy Payne for the words because he played this wacky (sings a portion of the keyboard melody Payne played on the song’s bridge) that started the thinking process with this wacky sheriff, samurai swords, and all that.

How about “Rockin’ Down the Highway”?
There’s not a huge story behind that; I just liked the chord change and built around that, combined the bridge and, like a lot of songs, found other chords to to enhance so it’s not just a straight I-IV-V. It mostly wrote itself, including the words, which is always the most fun. When that happens, to me, somebody else is doing the writing and you’re just sitting there, channeling it.

The same thing happened with “A World Gone Crazy” on the new album. I just sat there, and don’t know where it came from.

“A World Gone Crazy” has a very old-school Doobies feel, so that makes sense…
It’s a New Orleans feel. This band has been influenced by that city a great deal, both Pat and myself – Fats Domino and Lee Dorsey, Professor Longhair, Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, the Meters and the Neville Brothers – all those guys from New Orleans on the radio. Theirs was a very distinctive sound, like Stax/Volt had a very distinctive sound. I absolutely loved it. I wasn’t aware where it was coming from. I didn’t get to New Orleans until 1970, but when the band first played there, everybody was blown away – by the music, the food, the feel of the town. You walk the streets or ride the street cars out to those old type cemetaries and everything’s got Spanish moss hanging off of it… it’s another world. And I’m still writing about it, so obviously, it had a huge impact. I wrote a couple of songs about it, and for Pat, it was the impetus behind “Black Water” and “Toulouse Street.”

Speaking of “Black Water,” did you play guitar on that song?
No, I didn’t play a note on that song. I just sang on it. That wasn’t unusual in those days, actually – you could say the same thing about “China Grove,” Pat didn’t really play on that song, I just went in and layered guitars. “Black Water” was an unusual song – a place we’d never really gone before, with that round in the middle with the singing. Obviously, we’d been using fingerpicking for awhile but, but not with that kind of a rhythm behind it. It was pretty cool.

Through the years, the Doobies have undergone their share of personnel changes. Who do you see as the key players in various eras?
Well, initially, we were a good band, but we played too fast and we were a little sloppy. I think when Mike Hossack came in, we got much better in the rhythm section; he was a really good drummer… But then he and Keith Knudsen switched bands, and Keith was a great dummer, as well. And having Tiran Porter on bass made a huge difference.

After that, there was a lot of players, like Jeff Baxter, who added great guitar ideas and, of course, Mike McDonald, who changed the sound of the band’s musical style. There were other drummers – Chet McCracken, who took John’s place when he left, John McFee on guitar and vocals, Bobby Lakind on percussion and vocals, and Willy Weeks on bass at different periods.

In late 1975, you took a hiatus…
Well, I had a bleeding ulcer and ended up in the hospital, so I couldn’t tour. But I went out with them in the spring of ’76 for the album Takin’ It To the Streets, and then stayed with them until ’77, when we were working on Livin’ On the Fault Line. I had four songs ready for the album, but I pulled them off and said, “I have to go for a while,” and I left the band in ’77 to get away from the road scene. Because basically, we were either on the road or in the studio all the time. There wasn’t any time at home, and I’m a homebody. So, I left. And all I did was play baseball and lift weights. I didn’t really pick up a guitar for about six months, then I started slowly drifting back into it. That led to the two solo albums I did, Everything You’ve Heard Is True, in ’79, and Still Feels Good, in ’81.

You’ve played a pretty wide range of guitars through the years. Back in the day you played a Les Paul goldtop, an SG…
I’ve got that 1970 goldtop sitting right here. It was the first thing I bought when we got some front money.

Were you much of gearhead back in the day?
I wasn’t educated enough to be a gearhead! As far as amplifiers, guitars, and stuff, I didn’t have the money to go out and get this, that, and the next thing. I was still mostly playing my ’55 Bandmaster, but – just to show you what a gearhead I wasn’t – I bought an Ampeg SVT and a Stratocaster. If you want to hear “terrible,” try a Stratocaster through an SVT. It just wasn’t working!

(RIGHT) Johnston uses this Martin Doobie 42 signature model on tour. It has Indian rosewood back and sides, Engelmann spruce top, ivoroid binding, pearl herringbone trim on the top and soundhole, ebony bridge with pearl hands making the “OK” sign in the wings, and a bound headstock with an inlaid Doobie Brothers winged insignia.

But it got good and loud…
Oh god, it was definitely loud! In the confines of the 12th Street basement, it was deafening. Which is why my hearing is what it is today – almost non-existant! Thankfully, I discovered the Ampeg V4 not long after that, which was an incredible guitar amp.

I went back to that basement years later, and couldn’t believe how much it shrunk! It had a ceiling height of roughly six feet, maybe six and a half. It was cement and it was dinky. It seemed much bigger back when we crammed so many people in there. Drums, amps on 10… Man, it was loud!

Did you get the SG for any particular reason?
I had an SG Special before I got the Les Paul. My first good guitar was a 335, and I ended up getting rid of it early on to get a J-50, and I can’t remember why that happened, but it did. So the next good electric I got was the SG Special, with P-90 pickups, because they were inexpensive. Then, when we got some front money from Warner Brothers, I bought the Les Paul, because I’d always wanted one. In time, I switched to the SG Standard with humbuckers, because it was so much lighter than the Les Paul and you could get up higher on the neck more easily. I used both for recording quite a few songs on many albums, along with a couple of other Les Pauls with humbuckers.

Later, I ran into a B.C. Rich Seagull, and I’ve been seeing that thing in more old videos, so I guess I played it more than I thought! I played that on the road and in the studio… and I also had an L-5 solidbody at the time.

Which guitar did you use on “China Grove”?
That was the SG Standard, and I think I ran it through either a Bandmaster or the Bassman with four 10s.

How’d you find the Explorer?
There was a place in Mill Valley called Prune Music, and every year they’d have a guitar show. People from all over the Bay area would come there buying Flying Vs, Explorers, Les Paul Juniors, Firebirds, old Stratocasters – anything you could imagine. And they sold Mesa equipment when Randy (Smith, founder of Mesa/Boogie) was just getting started. So at any given time, I would have 20 or 30 guitars sitting around the house that I absolutely had no use for (laughs)!

I did play the Explorer a lot, as well as the Flying V, but not until the late ’70s. I also played the Firebird a lot; I got it from Johnny Winter. That was a killer guitar, but unfortunately, it was stolen.

Which of those do you still have?
None. The L-5 was stolen when somebody broke into my house in Fairfax, stole that and the J-50, which I had used to cut everything acoustic up to that point. I think that was late ’75.

When did you start playing PRS guitars?
I picked up my first PRS in 1985 – the year they came out – and took it on a U.S.O. tour I did with Kansas, David Jenkins from Pablo Cruz, a band called Red Seven, and Leon Medica, who was the bass player from Le Roux. I took the Explorer and that first PRS. Shortly thereafter, I bought another PRS that became my go-to guitar. I’ve been using PRS guitars ever since.

What did you like about PRS guitars?
It was no great secret that PRS was a combination of Les Paul and Stratocaster – that’s what they were about. I was playing the 24-fret version rather than the 22-fret, so I could get pretty high on the neck. The fret width isn’t the same as an SG, but the weight and balance is great. And it wasn’t as heavy as a Les Paul. I could do more on it than I could with a Strat. And of course, the pickups in those days – everything was hand-wound and they changed all the time. Every time you put on a new guitar, the pickups were different.

I bought a few more PRSs around ’89 when we got the band back together and did Cycles. I started playing several PRSs, and just never stopped. I just retired one I’d been playing for five years, and started playing a 25th Anniversary Custom 24 with binding on the neck and a headstock with a Modern Eagle inlay. The pickups are 57/08s, they’re just incredible.

On the video for “World Gone Crazy” you’re playing a Tele…
It was the only thing available (laughs)! We did the “performance” footage in Printer’s Alley, in Nashville. Originally, we were going to do the video in New Orleans – I wanted to do it in the French Quarter and get people from the area to be characters in it. Instead, we ended up playing a big event for Wal Mart in Orlando as part of our distribution deal, then we were in Nashville for a week, doing press and everything, and played the Grand Ole Opry, which was a once in a life time experience I’ll alway treasure.

So we did all the performance footage in Printer’s Alley. The guitars were borrowed, and he had no PRSs; John was playing a Strat, Pat was playing a 335, and I was playing a Tele, which seemed to fit seeing as how the song was released to country radio. I don’t play Fenders a lot, but they have a distinctive sound that works well for rhythm on certain tunes, like “Old Juarez” from World Gone Crazy.

Do you use the same gear live and in the studio?
Not necessarily. If I have access to my guitars on the road, I play PRSs. But amp-wise, for four or five years now, I’ve been using two Fender Super Sonics – one for rhythm and another dedicated to lead. For the studio, I have a wide assortment of amps and guitars, including the Super Sonics.

That’s a nice amp.
It is. It sounds really good and screams with the PRS. It works really well. Lately, I’ve also started using the new PRS 2 Channel H amp for soloing, and man, that is a great-sounding amp!

Pat Simmons
Though his father knew a few chords on guitar and his grandfather played the violin, two older sisters and a record collection left to his family by a friend were key to Pat Simmons’ introduction to pop music – Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley, Bill Hailey, and some R&B all combined to inspire him at the age of just eight years old.

Did any particular artist inspire you to pick up a guitar?
Well, my friend across the street actually inspired me to pick up the guitar. We moved to a new neighborhood in Los Gatos, he invited me over one afternoon. His mother had a Harmony archtop – she and his dad had a country band. It was a nicer model, with a glossy finish. And I flipped when I saw it – an instrument I’d seen Ricky Nelson, Elvis, and Chuck Berry play on television. I put it on my knee, and he taught me a G chord.

After that, I had an incredible desire to play guitar. I’d go to his house every day.

Did you get a guitar for your ninth birthday?
Actually, I got it for Christmas the next year! It was horrible, with a 2×4 for a neck – it was, literally, untunable. I don’t think there was a brand name it; it just said “Made in Mexico.” But it looked cool, and I played it for a couple of years.

What was the first song you learned to play?
“The Crawdad Hole” (sings melody…“wanna go fishin’ in the crawdad hole,” laughs)! Finally, for my birthday one year we went shopping for a better guitar.

What did you get?
A Harmony classical. I started taking lessons from a lady in San Jose who was a traditional folk player. At her house, I saw a stereo system made from a kit her husband assembled. And she had Josh White, Pete Seeger, and Appalachian folk records. She wanted to teach me traditional American songs. She played a nylon-string guitar, so she suggested I get one. That’s how I ended up with the Harmony.

(LEFT TO RIGHT) This ’62 model was Simmons’ first Fender Stratocaster, and set him down the path as a “Strat guy.”
This 1982 Westwood was built by Simmons’ guitar tech, Joe Vallee. It has been on every Doobies album since 1990.
Simmons bought this ’34 National when the Doobies reunited in 1989.
“Living in Hawaii, I’m more appreciative of its wonderful Hawaiian motif.” This ’22 Gibson L-4 was given to Simmons by a friend for whom he posted bail. Pat Simmons/guitars photos: Nadav Benjamin.

How did things progress from there?
In junior high, I saved money and bought a Silvertone, and I’d plug it into this cheap tape recorder, cross the output and input signals, and sound would come out the recorder’s speaker.

If I was playing with somebody else, I’d borrow an amplifier. We learned to play charts and instrumental stuff like the Ventures’ “Walk Don’t Run,” “40 Miles of Bad Road,” “Rumble,” and “Night Train.” That was my introduction to playing electrically.

What was your first band that gigged?
The surf bands I played in were short-lived, but we played at my school and at parties a couple of times. My first real band happened in high school and was called The Unrelated Brothers. I had friends who were part of the psychedelic scene and we were into the stuff coming out of San Francisco at that time – the first Jefferson Airplane album. We did some Byrds songs because I really liked that stuff. The other guys were more into the Stones and the Beatles.

Did you do any original music?
Not with the band. I actually played in a club when I was 15, in Saratoga, and did some originals. It was a coffee house kind of a thing where I’d make five or ten bucks in a night doing what I loved to do. I also hung out a lot at a place where Jorma Kaukonen played, and I really loved Jorma’s music. So, at 16 or 17, I was watching these real masters. Jorma is one of the masters of blues guitar – a fabulous player. Watching him play had a huge impact on me.

I continued to play into my college years, and always had a gig. I had been influenced by Chet Atkins early on, and heard John Renborn, and began to experiment with my own guitar instrumentals, open tunings, and different fingerstyle techniques. The only unfortunate part was my parents were not supportive of my lifestyle; it was the late ’60s and I was hanging out in San Francisco…

What do you remember about first seeing Tom Johnston and the guys in Pud?
At the time, I was playing with Peter Grant, who played banjo and for years was Hoyt Axton’s steel player. We played the north coast of California, and one night we were playing a gig at the Gaslighter Theater, in Campbell. They had hired Hot Tuna, and asked if we wanted to open. But when Peter and I walked in, Hot Tuna wasn’t there. I asked, “What’s going on?” The owner said, “Skip Spence, from the Moby Grape, is gonna play. He’s got a band with another guy.” Well, Skip showed up as we were finishing our set, followed by John Hartman, Tom, and bass player Greg Murphy. So they walk in with their amps and set them onstage. I was very curious to see what was gonna happen. Well, they started playing and Skip started doing what he did – kind of spacing out onstage. But the other three were playing their hearts out; Tommy was playing and singing, and they did some original tunes. I was blown away. I thought, “Wow, this guy can really sing and play.”

When they finished their set, I walked up and asked Skip, “How’re you doin’?” He said, “Hey, Pat. Let me introduce you to the guys.” So he introduced me to Tom and John, and they said, “We saw you playing, you guys were great.” Then Tom told me, “You gotta come by the house. Bring your guitar, and we’ll jam.” But I didn’t go over. I don’t know why, but I didn’t.

Then, one day I was standing in my yard, and up walks John. He goes, “You gotta come by the house, man. We’re trying to put a band together. It’s me and Tom and we got another bass player, and Skip’s gonna play, and maybe Peter Lewis (another member of Moby Grape). We want to do some harmonies and some cool guitar interplay.”

So, a few days later, I went by. There was no jam going on, but Tom and John were there and we played some acoustic guitar at a table in the backyard. We played for hours, jamming on some of my tunes and some of his stuff.

That was how we started getting to know each other, musically. After that, I’d go over every so often with my Epiphone Texan with a DeArmond pickup – my acoustic was also my electric! I wasn’t sure I wanted to do the same thing they did; they were doing Cream stuff, Who, and some things Tommy had written that were pretty heavy rock at that time. So I wasn’t really sure about it. Finally, he called and said, “We have a gig, we’d love to have you play a gig with us. We need somebody to sing harmonies and play rhythm.”

So, then we started rehearsing, and we’d go three or four days in a row to get a couple sets. We didn’t have a name, but one of the guys living in the house said, “You guys smoke so much pot, you should call yourselves the Doobie Brothers!” We said “That’s really stupid.” But we needed to call ourselves something, so the Doobie Brothers were born.

From there, we kept gigging. And we really connected with audiences from the get-go. Within any community, there are two or three bands people talk about, and we ended up being one of those bands. There was something there from the beginning that we didn’t really recognize.

But you probably recognized some chemistry…
We knew we had something cool. Most bands might have one guy who can really sing and one good guitar player, and everybody else was kind of excess baggage. But we had three singers – myself, Tom, and the bass player at the time, Dave Shogren, whom I went to high school with. So we had three-part harmony – the John, Paul, George thing. Tom, likewise, understood that great harmony singing and great guitar playing brought something extra to a performance.

So your role was to go side by side with Tom’s guitar playing, be the primary harmony singer, and let Tom be the “front man?”
I think so. Tom would defer to me a lot because he wanted to have somebody else do some songs, he didn’t want to have to take on the entire load. I had written several different country songs and had been doing a lot of covers anyway, so I took up as much slack as necessary. The band’s dynamic has always had us singing harmony for each other and taking turns on lead vocals, likewise with solos and so on.

As the Doobies rolled through the ’70s racking up an impressive array of hits, what were the high points for you?
The most recognizable high points, for me, involved touring with some people we really admired. Our first tour was with Tracy Nelson and Mother Earth, with John “Toad” Andrews and Bob Arthur, who’s a great blues guitar player and a vintage-guitar addict. Later with Lynrd Skynrd, Steeley Dan, Rod Stewart and The Faces, The Stones, Huey Lewis, Chicago, Little Feat, Alabama, man the list goes on and on…

Another interesting point was when we backed Chuck Berry! At one point, every band in America has done that (laughs)!

How did that go down for you guys?
Pretty much the same way you hear it does with every band. He abused everyone a little – told us all how terrible we were playing and how if we didn’t lay back, we’d have to leave the stage. Then, when we thought he was coming back for an encore, he left us standing there by ourselves in front of the audience.

When and where was your Chuck moment?
At a college in Chico, California, I think it was.

Were you using the Doobies name at the time?
Yeah, we played a set and then he came out. I had listened to every song on his greatest hits album over and over, and they’re pretty simple songs, but there are subtle things you’ve got to figure out. I also learned that he always plays in F or Bb (laughs)! Of all the horrible keys for guitar players! It was interesting, and of course he doesn’t play the songs like the original arrangement.

Who was responsible for getting the first decent electric guitar in your hands?
I saved and I bought a guitar from a bartender at The Chateau, a club in Los Gatos where we played our first paying gig. He said, “I’ve got a Gibson guitar I think would be good for you, and I’m lookin’ to sell it.” It was a Gibson ES-330, and I bought it for 200 bucks or something like that. He let me pay him over time, so every time we played The Chateau, I’d give him money.

Was it a big change, going from your acoustic to the 330?
What I had been using was working fine. It was just hard to play solos high on the neck on the acoustic. And the guys would have to turn down a bit when I soloed because I could only turn up so much before it started to feed back (laughs)! Once I started using the 330, they didn’t have to turn down.

This ’66 Epiphone Texan was Pat Simmons’ primary guitar before he joined the Doobies, and until he finally bought his first electric guitar at the band’s urging. He used it to write and record “Black Water,” “Slippery St. Paul,” “Larry the Logger,” “South City Midnight Lady,” “Slack Key Soquel Rag,” and many other songs.

Tom is credited with writing most of the band’s songs, but “Black Water” is your baby. What’s the story behind that song?
I was into folk blues, and had that riff (sings the fingerpicked melody) – kind of a lazy delta blues thing – to start. Soon after, I was in the studio, recording a part, and while they worked on something in the booth, I start playing that riff, just tweaking around. Our producer, Ted Templeman, said, “What is that? There’s something about that riff that’s really cool.” So I continued to play with it. Shortly after, we were playing some shows in New Orleans when the song started to come to me. I think it was all the wonderful experiences – the food, walking along the Mississippi, the French Quarter, Dixieland music in the clubs. For instance, I wrote the second verse while riding a streetcar up St. Charles Street to the Garden district to do my laundry. It was raining – one of those summer showers where it’s sunny. It was a magical moment for me. So I jotted down the lyrics. “If it rains I don’t care, don’t make no difference to me, just take that streetcar that’s going uptown.”

So, inspiration came in bits and pieces…
It’s always kind of been that way for me. I don’t sit down and say, “I’m going to write this kind of song, or that kinda song.” I either come up with a musical idea that’s suggestive of something like a rockin’ riff and rockin’ lyric, or something more plaintive or sensitive.

What other Doobie riffs are yours?
I played at least something on most of songs… “Long Tain Runnin’” has a signature kind of lick Tom and I do together.

Yes, that one sort of defines the interplay between you…
I think so. But I usually try to find something that works in that manner. On a lot of tunes, we play similar riffs. A good example is “Jesus Is Just All Right,” and on “Rockin’ Down the Highway” I’m playing pretty much the same kind of riff. I play banjo on “Listen to the Music” (laughs).

How did that happen?
We were working on the song and I thought, “What if we had banjo here?” I knew it was off the wall, and I’m not really a great banjo player, but wondered what it would sound like. Ted looked at me sideways when I said it (laughs)! He said, “What? Nobody plays banjo on rock and roll records!” But he was always cool about letting us try stuff, even if we didn’t use it. So I gave it a try, and afterward he said, “Man, that’s so cool.” So we kept banjo on the chorus.

Who do you see as the key players in the evolution of the Doobies?
Well, of course, Tom and Mike McDonald. But Tiran Porter is an under-appreciated hero – such a great bass player, and key in so many hits. He’s not afraid to step outside the basic pattern if needed, but he can certainly get in the groove so you get that low-end that propels the song. Willie Weeks played for us near the end of the first era, and he’s obviously a great player, as well. He was really key to what we were doing. John McFee, in the latter era, when Mike was in the band, became a key player, and continues to be. John is a fabulous player, super-talented, and an imaginative guy on multiple levels. He can play guitar, dobro, fiddle, a little banjo, a little mandolin, and he’s a great singer, as well.

Which guitar do you play most onstage?
I have three Westwoods I play quite a bit. They were built by Mark Brown, and he gave me exactly what I was looking for in terms of neck profile, the neck joint, and the body, which is ash, I believe.

I also play a koa Strat-style guitar built by my guitar tech, Joe Vallee. When we’re not on the road, he works at the Roberto Vinn School of Lutherie, in Phoenix. and he used EMG pickups with active electronics and a Washburn vibrato just like the guitars Mark built for me. Joe’s a fabulous craftsman, and has helped me create a wonderful amplified setup using a Mesa Mark Five for my live shows with the Doobies.

You own a handful of nice vintage instruments, including a Gibson L-7.
I bought that in New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina. I had heard so many horrible stories, I thought “I’m going down there and spend some money to support the local economy.” So I went into a music store, looking at guitars. I had always wanted an older Gibson archtop to use in the studio, so bought the L-7.

It plays pretty well?
Plays like a dream, and sounds great. It’s a funny guitar because the pickguards off-gas, so I have to keep cleaning the frets and replacing the strings, but it’s worth it.

Have you recorded with it?
I used it a little bit on the last album; I used it on “I Know We Won,” which I wrote with Willie Nelson.

How about the ’34 National?
I stumbled across that guitar in a vintage shop in Texas. It was set up for fretting, as opposed to a slide. It’s a great guitar – sounds good, plays good. And it’s so beautiful – it’s one of those guitars I just like to sit and look at. I used it on “I Can Read Your Mind,” from Cycles.

National resonators are pieces of art.
Yes. It’s got the Hawaiian-motif engraving.

How about the Gibson L-4?
That has a much more interesting story. I had a friend in Las Gatos in the early days… I was into motorcycles, and got to know this hardcore biker through a mutual friend. Eventually, he moved away. But one day years later, I got a call. “Pat? This is Dave.” I said, “How’s it going, Dave?” He goes, “I’m in jail and need to get out so I can get back to work so I can pay an attorney.” I thought, “Well, he’s a good guy.” So I sent him bail money – then didn’t hear from him for about 10 years, until the Doobies were touring again in the early ’90s. We pulled up to a gig in Denver, here’s this guy standing in the parking lot, holding a guitar case. He goes, “You remember me?” And I go, “Of course,” He said, “I’m here to pay you back. I don’t have any money, but I got this for you.” So he opens the case, and here’s this Gibson. I’m thinking to myself, “I’d rather have the money.” But he’s really enthusiastic. “I got it especially for you,” he said. “It’s a fantastic guitar. I showed it to Taj Mahal and he really wanted it, but I told him I’d promised it to you.” I told him, “I’d really rather you sell the guitar and give me the money. Pay me 10 bucks a month if you want.”

Finally, though, I relented. So he went backstage while we played the gig. But at some point after the show, he disappeared with the guitar. Gone! I asked, “Did anybody see Dave?” Well, years go by again before we’re back in Colorado, and there he is again, with the guitar. I asked him what happened at the previous gig, and he goes, “Somebody came over and asked to see my backstage pass. I didn’t have one, so they threw me out.” Anyway, he gave me the guitar.

How many years passed between when you bailed him out and when you finally got the guitar?
Twelve, maybe 15. He passed away last year, I believe. Quite a guy.

How about the ’61 SG?
The SG I bought years ago. We were on the road with Pablo Cruz, playing in Chicago, when Dave Jenkins, myself, and Cory Lerios, the keyboard player, drove to a vintage-guitar shop in DeKalb, where I bought that one and an Epiphone Texan similar to the one I already owned.

I had never owned an SG. But Tommy had one in the early days and I always liked it – loved the tonality. I also loved the stuff Eric Clapton played with an SG, and Pete Townshend played one and I always loved his tone… Carlos Santana played one and I loved the tone he got.

I played it a little on the road, but the tuning instability bothered me. I did use it in the studio because I love the sustain and the tone those P-90s get. There’s something about the sound of those pickups on particular guitar that’s kinda unique. It’s different from a Les Paul Junior. I still love that guitar. You can hear it on “Dependin’ On You,” on Minute By Minute.

And your ’62 Strat?
I got that from a friend in Santa Cruz. I had never owned a Strat and thought it would be good to have one in the studio. It sat for a while, then while we were working on Minute by Minute, I started using it. From then on, I was a Strat guy. I played that guitar for a while, but recognized that it was collectible, so I went to Mark Brown, but that guitar was the beginning of Stratocasters for me.

(LEFT TO RIGHT) Simmons bought this ’61 Gibson SG Special in the mid ‘70s because he wanted a Santana-like sound. “It was so fun to bend those strings and feel the Latin soul ooze from the frets! It’s just a great blues instrument in the Les Paul Junior tradition. Growing up, I [saw] many great players use this kind of guitar, and I never forgot how good it sounded.”
This early-’70s Gibson ES-335TD was Simmons’ main guitar for more than a decade. Bought in ’73, after the Doobies got an advance on their first album, Simmons says it was “my dream guitar, and worked well in many genres… I could cover all the bases.” It was painted to match an Indian motorcycle Simmons owned, and he used on it on every Doobies album through 1982.
Simmons bought this ’48 Gibson L-7 in New Orleans just after Hurricane Katrina.

Do we hear it on any prominent guitar parts from back in the day?
I used it on a lot of stuff – Minute By Minute, most of One Step Closer, “What a Fool Believes,” maybe, the chorused guitar part on that song. I’m sure I used it on “Real Love.” It became my go-to guitar. I was still using the 335 kind of equally, on both albums.

You mentioned the 335…
I played that particular guitar from around the time we were doing What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits – the mid ’70s. Like I say, I had a lot of other 335s, but that became my favorite. It started out as a 350 stereo, with the Veritone. It played well and I changed the pickups and threw that crazy paint job on it. I told the guy I wanted it to look like my 1941 Indian motorcycle. It was another of my go-to guitars from ’75 up to ’83.

What’s the story with its white Volume and Tone knobs?
Those are something he found to give it a ’50s look.

In our photo, it looks like the headstock is darker than the body…
It was on display in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for a long time, and I think the headstock didn’t have a light hitting it as much.

That’s a shame.
It is. Originally, it had a sort of Gretsch orange color, but when I got it back, it was almost pink.

Next, we have the ’66 Epiphone Texan.
There was a guy who played folk blues around San Jose when I was 15 or 16. He played a Texan, and I loved its tone, I loved the look of it, and I loved the feel of it; he let me play it a couple times.

So, one day I went to a music store and they had one. A friend from high school was working in the store, and gave me a good deal. That guitar has been my companion forever. I’ve played it on every album we’ve ever made. It’s my buddy.

Do we hear it on “Black Water”?
Yes, it is the guitar on “Black Water.”

Are the stickers on the case the real deal, or were they applied for cosmetic purposes?
They’re holding the vinyl on the case (laughs)! I started putting stickers on it as the vinyl started peeling off. But it has been around the world.

How did the new album come together?
We had been thinking about doing an album for a long time, but kept getting offers to tour, so it kept getting put on the backburner. In fact, we were getting ready for a tour at a rehearsal hall in L.A. when, lo and behold, in walked Ted Templeman. He asked, “Are you guys writing or doing any recording?” We said, “We’ve been writing and talking about recording, but we haven’t started.”

We gave him some demos, and he came back and said, “I love some of these tunes. Would you be interested in going in with me to lay down some tracks?”

That was the beginning the album. We went to John McFee’s studio first, laid down a few tracks, then went to Sunset Sound, where I think we laid down 11 tracks in 10 days.

There must have been some pent-up creativity.
I think so. For the most part, we were set to go so that by the time we got to Sunset Sound, so we knocked ’em out pretty fast. The first single was “Nobody,” which was a track from our very first album that we re-recorded. We weren’t going all-out to make a big hit out of it – it was more a signature song. We wanted to reintroduce ourselves after being away for so long. It had the iconic sound we were known for, with the rhythmic guitars, fingerpicking, the harmonies we’ve employed throughout our career.

We also did a video that included footage we filmed in the early ’70s, used as a montage with current stuff.

Was the first single, “World Gone Crazy,” targeted at country radio?
For the most part, yes, which made me scratch my head because it wasn’t a typical country song. But it really connected with our audience – that 40-to-60 age bracket. They don’t listen to Lady Gaga, they don’t listen to rap. They listen to classic rock, adult contemporary, and country, which has shifted gears into a more pop category.

Speaking of, what was it like being on the “Crossroads” show with Luke Bryan?
That was fantastic, and a great opportunity to connect with not only a younger audience, but the country audience, as well. And Luke really gets our music. He sang with conviction and I don’t think he felt funny about what he was doing. And we felt the same about his music. And Luke is such a talented guy – great songs, with great playing.

There’s a lot of country music these days that uses rock and roll rhythm combined with country lyrics.
Absolutely. And I’m one of those guys who likes it all. I’m not a big rap fan… I appreciate the finer points of hip-hop, but it’s not something I necessarily listen to. I appreciate its worth.

The second single, “Far From Home,” spent a good bit of time on the Top 20 adult contemporary chart. What was the band’s reaction when it charted?
It kinda blew our minds. It was not an obvious track to release as a single, in my opinion. But I think it’s one of the better songs I’ve written. We were pleasantly surprised it charted, and doing the video was really cool. It was appropriately done, and reflects the contents of the song. It’s great to have a new album, and some new music to perform for our audiences. We’ve been getting a great response to the songs in our set, and I feel we’ve added to our legacy, and gained new fans along the way.

This article originally appeared in VG November 2011 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Photos: Alex Solca.

In deciding who to hit up to play on his new album, Unusual Suspects, Leslie West put a lot of thought into his musical and personal connections. And he’s justifiably proud of the recruits; decades-long friend Steve Lukather, Billy Gibbons, Slash, Zakk Wylde, who affectionately refers to West as “Dad,” and labelmate Joe Bonamassa, who so dug the West, Bruce and Laing version of the Willie Dixon/Eddie Boyd blues standard “Third Degree” that he asked West to cut it again for Unusual Suspects.

“These guys don’t show up to play on just anybody’s albums,” West notes. “They’re all stars in their own right and fantastic players – each with their own sound and style.”

What’s the deeper story behind the crew you lined up to make the new album?
Well, when I signed with Mascot’s label, Provogue Records, they wanted me to play with Buddy Guy. I don’t even know Buddy Guy. I thought, “I wouldn’t know where to begin.” Then he mentioned some other guys. But I had in my own head who I would like to play with. Slash was one, but I didn’t know how that was gonna come about. Funny enough, my wife one day said to me, “You got a message on Facebook from a guy named Peter Merluzzi, who says he’s Slash’s tour manager. He gave me a phone number and e-mail – says Slash has been a fan of yours for years. He wants you to call him back.” I asked her, “Do you think it’s bulls**t?” And she said, “What do you have to lose?” So I e-mailed him, and he told me Slash was playing New York and wanted me to stop down and watch. But I had just undergone surgery on my leg, so I couldn’t go. I was really disappointed. But I wrote back, and said, “I’m working on a track called ‘Mud Flap Mama,’ and I’d love to have him play solos with me.” I sent him the track, and about a week later, Peter sent an e-mail saying, “He loves the track.”

So, I was going to L.A. for the N.A.M.M. show last January, and to do some recording. We rented a studio in Hollywood, a couple of blocks from where Slash was working. I’m sitting there, and I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around and Slash says, “Here I am.” No roadies, no entourage, just him and his guitar. It was incredible. The way he played on the track… I mean, his guitar sounded like a harmonica! After the session, I gave him one of my Dean signature guitars. He was thrilled.

So that worked out, and the other things seemed to fall in place, too. I’ve known Zakk for years, and knew I wanted him to play on “Nothin’s Changed” – a frantic song that would go with the way Zakk plays and the unfrantic way I play. I thought it would sound good.

How did you connect with Joe Bonamassa?
I played on one of his early albums – a track called “If Heartaches Were Nickels,” with Greg Allman. So I told Joe, “I’m doing an album and I’d love to jam with you.” So, one of his favorite tracks of all time is West, Bruce, and Laing’s “Third Degree.” He said, “If you ever want to re-cut it, I’m in.” I said, “Consider it done.” So I had Kenny Aronoff on drums on the whole album, we cut the track and went right to the studio again. The two of us sat in the control room, and played opposite each other – amps in the band room.

And the Reverend Billy Gibbons?
Billy was friends with my producer, Fabrizio, but I knew Billy from when ZZ Top did their first tour. I even knew his parents.

So, all these things seemed to work out… Then Lukather came to the studio one day, to see Zakk. I said, “Listen man, on this track there’s a boogie part that I cannot play. You could play it.” He played it on acoustic, and it made the whole track, right off the bat! It’s so subtle, but man, he plays it so smooth and evenly.

A lot of people ask, “How did you know which guy should play on what?” Well, it just seemed to fit, you know? I didn’t have to think too much about it. It just worked out.

How did the players play into the album’s title?
I called it Unusual Suspects because it’s… You know when you’re doing an album and the label wants you to get guys? You get this guy, you get that guy. Let’s get this guy to play organ, let’s get this guy to play piano, let’s get this guy… I just wanted four or five really great guitarists who, in their own right, stood up like an eagle on the top of a mountain, you know?

What stood out in your mind in the process, watching those guys play?
Seeing how easygoing Slash was. He walked in wearing a baseball cap and a shirt that says “guitar zero” on it! And the way he played – right on my tail. And Bonamassa, too; I’m running the session, during “Third Degree” and at the end of the session, I said, “You’re playing so f***in’ fast but you don’t miss a note!” You know some guys play really fast, but they’re sloppy, but he’s so clear and clean, and he’s a guitar geek. He looks like he’s about 20 still. I really enjoyed the whole experience. I did all the pre-production here in New Jersey, then flew out to L.A. twice to finish the recording. And Fabrizio Grossi, the producer, even came here once to finalize the last couple of mixes.

When you were a kid, you lived in the same building as Waddy Wachtel?
Yeah, I just got off the phone with Waddy (laughs)! We grew up in Forest Hills; he lived on one side of the building, I lived on the other. After two years, we met. He was so talented; he played drums with my band, the Vagrants, until we found a drummer. I remember, as soon as the Beatles would come out with a new song, like “I Feel Fine” or “Ticket to Ride,” he would figure it out so fast that in the time it took me to go down my elevator, go to his side of the building, go up in that elevator, he knew the song already! ’Cuz he’d been listening on the radio, I think WABC, where they were, “First to play the new Beatles song!” And he learned it so fast.

I remember he bought a Rickenbacker 12-string after George Harrison started playing one, and he had sold me his Les Paul Junior. In fact, he just today told me, “You know, it’s really funny. When I first moved out to L.A., I didn’t have any money and we were in the studio recording, Steve Stills had this Les Paul that I liked. I didn’t have any money, so I called my father.” And I remember his father – he was a real business guy, you know, with a suit and tie. And he said “Dad, you gotta lend me some money.” He says, “For what?” He says, “There’s a guitar I gotta get.” He says, “Whadya mean, a guitar?” “It’s a Les Paul.” His dad says, “You have a Les Paul.” He says, “No, I don’t. I sold it to Les.” His father asked, “What did you sell it to him for? (laughs)”

I swear, less than an hour ago, we talked about it because he’s doing something with Kenny Aronoff. But Bob – that’s his real name – taught me every lick the Beatles had, and he was playing Beach Boy stuff. I don’t know how he figured this stuff out so fast. Some guys have the gift. Even when he was taking guitar lessons, the teacher said to him one day, “You’re not reading this stuff, you’re playing by ear.” And he says, “Yeah, I hear it and I can play it.”

So, the Junior he sold you was the one you used in the Mountain days?
No, I’m not that smart (laughs)! The lead singer of my group, Vagrants… I sold it to him, and he spray-painted it white because, I’m sorry, but the sunburst finish on it was all scarred up and it had scratches on it. And I wanted a nice shiny… so I figured, “I’ll sell it to the lead singer of the Vagrants.” And he painted it white – ruined the damn thing! And of course I wish I had it now…

Do you know where it is?
No idea. The reason I started playing a Les Paul Junior was, when we started the group, I had a Hagstrom, and it wouldn’t stay in tune. So Felix Pappalardi one day says to me, “There’s a guy downtown, Matt Umanov. He works on guitars, and he’s got this Gibson Les Paul he got from Clapton and in place of where it would say ‘Gibson’ on the head in mother of pearl it says ‘Clapton,’ but it was cracked. Let’s go down there and if it’s ready, get that.”

So I go down there, and Matt doesn’t know where that guitar is. He lost it, probably somewhere in his vault! So he says, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you this one until I find it,” and he gave me a Les Paul Junior.

With a TV finish or sunburst finish?
It was the sunburst. But the pickup was so powerful. It just happened to be the right guitar at the right time. And then, all the English groups, when they came over – Mott the Hoople, Martin Barre with Jethro Tull – we’re all friends, we all toured together. They said, “Wow! Where’d you get that?” I said, “Felix gave it to me. But, you know if you go to a pawn shop you can buy one for a hundred bucks.” So while we’re on tour in Texas, that’s all Mick Ralphs would do, was go to all the pawn shops and buy up all the Les Paul Juniors.

I used to call it a tree with a microphone on it. It was the most basic guitar made. I think it was probably the cheapest Gibson.

West in the studio with Slash, and in the studio with Steve Lukather (left) and Zakk Wylde.

Do you still have the original one?
No, I gave it to Pete Townshend when they were doing Who’s Next. I used it in the studio and I gave it to him. I saw his brother years later and he told me that Pete had a flood at this house and all his guitars were damaged.

What other music and guitarists caught your ear when you were a kid?
The funny thing is, people say that I play a lot of blues. I didn’t know one blues guy! All I knew was The Who, the Stones, the Beatles. That was my schooling. The John Mayall Bluesbreakers [with Eric Clapton] album, I must have listened to that 3,000 times! I’d listen to that tone, wondering, “What amp is he using?” So I went into Manny’s Music and saw they had Marshall amps – the first store in New York to have Marshalls. All I knew was that it was an English amp and [Jim Marshall] used to work for Vox… The first Marshall I got was a 50-watt head and an 8×12 cabinet, which really had the best sound of all, but just didn’t have a lot of power. So later on, I would slave it through a 100-watt head. I just couldn’t get over the sound of it.

To this day, tone is the most important thing to me, besides being in tune. I don’t play that fast, I only use two fingers, really, on my left hand, to do all the fingering. I never learned how to use the pinky, I never learned how to use all the fingers like a real pro does. So I had to teach myself, and because I couldn’t play that fast, I wanted to make sure the notes really rang true. I didn’t want it to sound like a mosquito, like a fuzztone, I didn’t want it to sound like I was just driving the s**t out of it. I wanted to feel the air from the speakers – you see air being moved and you see that speaker moving… When I’m on stage and first plug in, and I feel a rush of air in my balls… That’s when I know my guitar is sounding good!

But the tone was the most important thing, getting a really great tone that I can listen back to six months or a year later and say, “That really sounds great.”

Did the Les Paul Junior become your favorite because of the way it sounded through a Marshall?
You know, when I first started, I didn’t use a Marshall. Our management got us a deal with Sunn and I wasn’t so thrilled with that – I didn’t like their guitar head. What happened was, we were playing the first gig for Mountain at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, and they said they would deliver the amps from the airport. Well, the boxes arrived, and I’m expecting to open up these Marshalls. But instead, I see these Sunns, and not only that, they sent me a P.A. head and two 4×12 cabinets, and it had these two other things that you put on top of the speakers that looked like air conditioning louvers, for the highs. It was a small P.A. So I was stuck playing with Albert King and Johnny Winter using these amps that I’d never played before. But, it had four mic inputs and a master volume. So I plugged into one of the mic inputs, got a good sound out of that, then turned the Volume to maybe five or six. It was really funny because you could turn the Bass all the way up and you got more treble. If you turned the Treble all the way up, you got more bass. I remember Albert King, he used to use these Acoustic amps. Well, his amp blew, so he wondered if he could use my amp. I said, “Yeah, but I don’t know how they work.” I had just gotten them. So he had to play out of them and he was having a terrible time because it certainly wasn’t his sound.

But those Sunns were the beginning of my sound. I used them on Mountain Climbing. On the first solo album, Mountain, I used Marshall, but after that it was Sunn. Then, the guy from Sunn said, “I’m going to get them to make a guitar amp.” I said, “You don’t have to. Just take the guts of this head, make a new box that says ‘guitar head’ or something.” They already had it, it was such a great-sounding amp.

Most of the time, a P.A. head is gonna be very clean-sounding…
It was clean, but the thing is, the mic inputs distort when you turn them all the way up. There’s your drive. If I was in mic channel one and wanted it clean, you put the Volume at two or three. But I would crank that sucker up to get to the volume I wanted. So it wasn’t that it was a dirty amp – I made it dirty. I’m sure that wasn’t their intention, I mean imagine somebody’s voice coming out of that!

West with Joe Bonamassa.

What’s your current rig?
I’m using Dean guitars now – I have four different models – and I use Blackstar amps. The Deans were great because years ago somebody would say, “Why don’t you have your own guitars?” I’d say, “You know, it sort of would look funny, putting my name on a guitar.” What, are you gonna have the Leslie West Les Paul Junior? It’s already a Les Paul! So when Dean came to me and said they’d like to do a guitar, I said, “Well, I want it to be a one-pickup, and I want the V of the neck to be shaped like my hand, and it slots so perfectly. And it has a little cutaway on the top. It looks like, I guess a updated version or like Ferrari made a Les Paul Junior. I play all different ones – there’s the USA Custom, the limited edition, a 40th Anniversary they did with a big headstock with my logo on the bottom of the body, it looks like a peace sign, but it’s really an LW logo. And then there’s an import, and I use them all because they all sound great. And we just came up with the Mississippi Queen model.

I’m thrilled because it took a long time for me to say, “Okay, I have my own guitar.” I waited for like 40 years!

I remember, it debuted at one of the summer N.A.M.M. shows in Austin. So I went down and the president of Dean, Elliot Rubinson, gave me a guitar. So here I am, playing my signature model, and I’m so f***in’ proud. And right across the aisle from Dean is Gibson. So a guy walks over while I’m holding the guitar, and says, “You know, we were thinking of making a Leslie West signature model.” I said, “Well, when? You had 40 years!” Timing is everything, you know (laughs)? But it is what it is.

When I’m testing a new amp rig, I like to hook it up in my garage, which has cement walls that make it so dry and loud, I can really tell if the amp is performing. Anybody can go into a studio or a great room and plug in an amp and have it sound great – like when you go to a N.A.M.M. show and plug in a guitar on that big floor. You don’t really know if the amp’s good. You imagine it sounds good because you want it to. But I put my amps through an acid test every time I get the opportunity. I turn them on just by themselves, no pedals, no nothin’. Just to hear the amp sound and what can I do to make them sound better. Not so much the volume, it’s the tone.

You’re planning a tour, right?
Yeah, with Uli John Roth and Michael Schenker. I’d just gotten out of the hospital [Ed. Note: West, who is diabetic, underwent surgery in June to remove his right leg above the knee after complications.] and I had to consider all of the things that go into a tour, plus how I’ll get around. I’ll probably sit down when I play, but I’ll be on a riser. I can play in a chair really well, and I don’t think I’ll be confident enough walking with a prosthetic – it’s not just snap on and go! I don’t want to worry about my balance while I’ve got to play and perform and sing. Maybe in a year or so I’ll be used to it.

Jay Geils with his 1936 Gibson ES-150 and ’61 Ferrari 250 GTE "2+2". Photo: Daniel Fogel. Photo: Daniel Fogel.

If you grew up listening to music in the ’70s, you probably associate the name J. Geils with a five-piece band that played raucous rock and roll to hip-shaking partiers. Led by guitarist John “Jay” Geils, the group toured the world and recorded more than a dozen albums, selling millions through the early ’80s. Originally focused on blues, R&B, and soul, The J. Geils Band later adopted a straight-ahead rock sound that helped them score numerous hit singles including the blockbusters “Freeze Frame” and “Centerfold.”

For the last 15 years, Geils has immersed himself in the jazz and swing of the 1940s and ’50s. His new disc, Jay Geils: Toe Tapping Jazz, is a set of jump blues and jazz standards by Count Basie, Benny Goodman and others. Previously, Geils’ tone, choice of notes, and instruments all helped him channel Charlie Christian in his Jay Geils Plays Jazz CD, as well as the New Guitar Summit live DVD with fellow guitar heavyweights Duke Robillard and Gerry Beaudoin. A rich hybrid of jazz and blues, Summit features three-part harmony guitars played at a level few achieve. Along with Beaudoin and Robillard, Geils is releasing another New Guitar Summit CD that includes Randy Bachman as a special guest.

At his studio in northern New England, Geils recently sat to discuss his influences, favorite instruments, and memories while walking through his awe-inspiring collection of instruments, which include vintage D’Angelico, Gibson, Gretsch, Epiphone, Rodier, and Stromberg archtops, and his complete series of Gibson tweed amplifiers. The pièce de résistance, however, is his 1959 Gibson Les Paul, which appeared on every J. Geils Band record and onstage at the band’s early performances.

Other noteworthy guitars in Geils’ collection include a Gibson L-5 previously owned by Howard Alden, a Gibson ES-250 and matching EH-150 and EH-185 amps, a Stromberg Master 400, three D’Angelicos, all three “stairstep peghead” guitars made by Gibson, several ’40s Epiphones, a blond ES-5, a blond ES-350, a Charlie Christian tenor guitar, a blond non-cutaway Super 400, and a cutaway ’59 blond Super 400.

A lot of people are surprised to hear how much your style has changed since your days with the J. Geils Band, when you were playing mostly blues, R&B and rock and roll… Did you always have an interest in the more straightforward jazz and traditional swing stuff?

Jay Geils’ guitar collection includes three D’Angelico (from left); a ’52 single-cutaway Excel, ’46 New Yorker in sunburst, and a ’40 Excel.

Yeah, always. My father was a big jazz fan, so that’s all I was exposed to as a kid. I saw Louis Armstrong and the Allstars live when I was 11, and I was a trumpet player before picking up guitar. By the late ’50s, Maynard Ferguson, Louis Armstrong, and Dave Brubeck were playing concerts at high school and college auditoriums. Plus, all the music that was playing in my house when I was a kid was big-band – Basie, Ellington, Goodman. I didn’t start playing guitar until I was a senior in high school.

And what kind of music were you playing when you finally picked up a guitar? Did you get right into the blues?

No, I was a fingerpicker and played only folk, which was a big scene in Boston in the early ’60s, with guys like Tom Rush and Dave Van Ronk. But it was around this same time that we were listening to a jazz station out of New York, WRBR, and every Sunday afternoon they’d have a blues show on which they played music by guys with names like Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters. I was like, “Wow, what’s that? That’s cool!” And I could actually play it, so that got me into the blues. But there wasn’t a lot of Chicago blues in Boston or Cambridge in ’64 or ’65, it wasn’t until after Dylan went electric at Newport in ’65 that the Club 47 and The Unicorn started happening. And around this time, I met [J. Geils Band member Magic] Dick and Danny [Klein] and we were actually thinking of moving to Chicago because that’s where Paul Butterfield, Charlie Musselwhite, and Mike Bloomfield were playing all the time. But what happened was all of those Chicago acts started coming to Boston and Cambridge. We used to stand outside the Club 47 and help Muddy Waters unload his station wagon, and we got to know Muddy, Buddy Guy, and Junior Wells.

Was Bloomfield a big influence?

Early on, until I discovered B.B. King. To me, the big three are B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, and Charlie Christian. Christian was the first guy who clearly understood that the electric guitar could be a solo instrument. His style has not a lot to do with T-Bone and B.B., but it certainly laid the foundation. There’s a few bent notes and there’s the passing chords B.B. used here and there. And T-Bone was the guy who put it into the next setting. I mean, the first two choruses of his first recording is him playing solo electric guitar, and that was in 1942! He was bending strings and using ninths, and nobody had heard that before. And then B.B. took it from T-Bone and added the jazz influences. B.B. was the first one to bend up to a pitch and hold it, he invented that, and that’s the hallmark of all blues and rock and roll guitar playing today. I do a lecture on this to demonstrate it, and it’s probably going on in 12,000 garages right now (laughs)! So, those are the big three for me, but obviously, I’ve listened to Albert King, Freddie King, Albert Collins, Buddy Guy – anything that makes me go “Oooh, what’s that?” Actually, Bloomfield turned me onto Albert King.

Did you know him well?

The "stairstep headstock" Gibsons in Jay Geils’ collection include this 1939/’40 J-55, 1940 ES-250, and ‘39/‘40 J-100.

I only saw him two days when Electric Flag was in town, but he hung out at our apartment the night before the show and I sat in with The Flag the night of the gig. He was great. At our apartment, we were talking about Albert King – this was right around the time that Albert’s Born Under a Bad Sign came out. Bloomfield kept saying “You’ve got to get this record… Let’s go, you’ve gotta get this right now!” And I said “Mike, this is Boston. There are no records stores open at 12:30 in the morning.” But I got it the next day.

Another big influence on me – because until the last three or four years, I was playing with Dick – was the Chess session guys… Matt Murphy, Louis Myers, Luther Tucker, Robert Junior Lockwood, all the guys on the Little Walter records… Because they were playing all those cool little figures behind the harmonica player, and I learned all of them. So that was a secondary influence only because I was playing with a harp player, but I enjoyed that backup role.

What was your first really good guitar and amp setup?

It was a ’60s Gibson ES-345 and an Ampeg Gemini. I couldn’t afford a Fender. When I first saw B.B. in the spring of ’67, he had a red 355 and a Fender Super Reverb. So that’s what I wanted. But I couldn’t afford either, so I found a used 345, and it was close enough.

So how did you go from that 345 to having such a great collection?

I had heard the first Bluesbreakers album with Clapton, then read an interview in Guitar Player where Bloomfield said he had discovered the Les Paul. So I’d been looking around for one. I went down to New York and picked up a ’56 Les Paul Custom with the alnico and P-90, and it sounded okay, but it wasn’t the sound I was looking for. Anyway, the J. Geils Blues Band was playing a gig in late ’68 or early ‘69, unbelievably enough, at Worcester Tech, the school I attended when we first moved to the area. And as we were packing up, a kid came up with that guitar (points to his ’59 Les Paul Standard). It had a different tailpiece, the pickguard was missing, and it had been varnished with a brush, but I knew what it was. He said, “Do you wanna buy this guitar. I need 600 bucks.” I said, “I don’t have $600, but I have this Les Paul Custom I just paid $600 for… I’ll swap.” And he did. I took the guitar to Eddy Murray and told him to make it look like it was supposed to. He scraped away the varnish and we found the parts it needed. In keeping with the times, I took the covers off the PAFs. That guitar – I call it the “lunch pail Les Paul” – and that amp (points to a tweed Gibson GA-40) were used on almost all the solos on all the J. Geils Band records we ever did, and I toured with it until I got the ’58 Flying V. That was another $600 guitar… actually, I didn’t pay for that either! I traded an ES-350T and a National steel.

What amplifiers were you using live with the Geils band?

(LEFT TO RIGHT) Jay Geils’ 1959 Gibson Les Paul is a veteran of studio and stage. ‘62 Gibson ES-345.

In the early days, I was using a hot-rodded Fender Bandmaster Reverb through two EV SROs, and eventually, we moved up to 100-watt Music Man amps. I was still using the ’59, crossing the country, opening for Black Sabbath. I had a couple of others too, including a totally mint ’58 cherry-sunburst Les Paul that I paid $800 for and sold for $2,400 and thought I’d made a killing (laughs)! But there was always something about the ’59.

So is that your “desert island” guitar?

Well, I don’t play it anymore. I have the original case, which has stickers from all over the world… There’s a picture on the back of The Morning After album where we’re sitting in an airport, and there are two brown Les Paul cases. One of them is that guitar and that case.

So you had a couple core guitars, but were on the lookout for others?

During the ’70s and the ’80s – the whole rock and roll period – I had guitars that I needed for the studio; a Tele, a Strat, a Martin D-28, a Dan Armstrong plexiglass I played slide on… But the main gigging guitars were the Les Paul, the V, and later, a couple of Gibson L-6Ss. When the band broke up, I wasn’t that interested in most of them. So from ’84 to ’92, I only had the Les Paul and the 345 because I was deep into the car business (Ed Note: Geils was a founding partner of KTR Motorsports, which specializes in vintage European sports cars). But it wasn’t until the early ’90s that Dick and I got together to form Bluestime that I got more into the swing jazz thing, and that’s when I started buying this stuff. I wanted an ES-150 and an ES-5, and I’ve always been a big fan and student of big-band rhythm guitar, so that led to all the acoustic archtops.

This music you play now requires fairly advanced technique. Were you always interested in learning it?

(LEFT TO RIGHT) ’40s Stromberg Master 400. ’36 Gibson ES-150

I had heard jazz guitar players since I was a kid. There’s a pretty famous Columbia album, the first in a series they did called Benny Goodman Combos. It was an early retrospective of all the small Benny Goodman groups, and three or four of the cuts were of the sextet with Charlie Christian and I wasn’t a big electric-guitar fan as a kid. I bought some R&B singles – Little Richard and Fats Domino – but I never bought an Elvis Presley record or rock-and-roll record. Part of that influence was from my father, who was into Basie and Ellington and the black groups. I knew a lot of those tunes, but didn’t know how to play them. So working some with Gerry and getting all the fake books made me realize how it all works. There’s a natural progression from playing blues to the next step, which are rhythm changes, which is the classic American song form. In the A section, it’s like a bunch of blues turnarounds, and then you have to deal with the bridge, which is where Charlie Christian comes in, because he was great at running the chords through the bridge, which is like a cycle of fifths or fourths. And from there, you can apply what you’ve learned previously…

Did you learn by reading music?

I can read music, but I learned everything off records.

Tell us about the new album and the group you’re playing with now.

(LEFT TO RIGHT) ‘39 Gibson L-5. ’51 Gretsch Synchromatic.

Well, the group changes nightly (laughs).  We do the classic jazz thing; there may be some preferred rhythm-section guys, but everyone knows the tunes, so people come and go based on who’s available. But the Shivers album features John Turner on bass and Les Harris on drums and Gerry Beaudoin, me, and Duke Robillard on guitars. It’s on Stony Plain Records.

I’ve also got another album out on Stony Plain called Jay Geils Plays Jazz, and have a second one in the can where I did one tune from 1940-something where I play electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and vibes, all on period-correct stuff. I played the 1940 ES-250 through the Gibson 185 amp, mic’d it with my ’39 Western Electric microphone. And I played the rhythm on the Howard Alden Gibson L-5, and it’s on a tune that Charlie did with Lionel Hampton called “One Sweet Letter From You.”

How did you and Gerry meet?

We met at the Boston guitar show in 1992 or ’93. I was trying to move beyond blues into rhythm changes and jazz, and Gerry said, “I’ve got a regular gig on Thursday nights. Why don’t you come down?” And that was exactly what I was looking for. We met up a few times and I started going to the gigs. We discovered a lot of mutual friends – like Duke (laughs)! And we started playing together. I didn’t know anyone else that played that swing jazz style.

You came out of the era of the big guitar hero, but you avoided the excessive playing that made many records of the era seem self-indulgent, and ultimately sound very dated.

Ahh, electronic masturbation (laughs)! I tried to be musical. As much as I love John Coltrane and Miles Davis, I love melody. Plus, as the band progressed, there was more and more pressure on us from the labels to produce hit records. So, some of those later solos were constructed as part of the melody.

Like on “One Last Kiss,” where you your lead part is also the melody of the song.

(LEFT TO RIGHT) ’53 Epi Deluxe. ‘52 Gibson ES-350.

Right. Or the solo to “Just Can’t Wait” – all on that Les Paul!

Obviously, you’ve seen great changes in the music industry. How do you go about publicity, distribution, and booking?

Gerry Beaudoin and I have our own label, Francesca Records, and basically, we get to do what we like. Jay Geils Plays Jazz is an example. I did that totally myself, just the s*** I wanted to do, with the guys I wanted to do it with.

In a lot of ways, you’re keeping this style of music alive.

I look at this like I looked at Bluestime, because we didn’t want to be one of those “rock it up” blues bands. I can appreciate Stevie Ray Vaughan and that he was a great player, but nobody was doing the Chicago stuff the authentic way. So that was our niche with that. We played around the States, went to Europe, went to Japan. We didn’t make a lot of money, but we did okay. We made it as exciting as we could while keeping it reasonably authentic because there is nobody else doing it; you just can’t hear Little Walter anymore. And it’s the same thing here. You just can’t go out and hear the Benny Goodman Sextet anywhere, but you can come hear me and Gerry. It’s not like we’re trying to re-create it, but we’re trying to have the same feel. And the people who come out, they’re all tapping their feet.

I often say at the beginning of the show, “Welcome to our living room, because if we weren’t here, we’d be doing this anyway.”

What do you see as the highlights of your career?

Playing next to B.B. King five years ago. I’ve known him since 1969, and before that had never had a chance to actually play with him. So that was a big deal. We did 17 shows, and he was great. Our paths have crossed numerous times, and we never got to do it toe-to-toe, and he was just terrific. He would finish his show with “The Thrill is Gone,” and the band would go into a little vamp, and he’d say “And now, my special guests tonight, J. Geils and Magic Dick” and his crew guys would put a chair on either side of B.B., and we’d sit on either side of him and just jam. That’s just the latest highlight. Touring with The Stones for two months in Europe (in 1982) wasn’t too hard to take (laughs)!

’50 Gibson ES-5

One of the biggest thrills in the last 10 years was playing with Bucky Pizzarelli, who has played with everybody. You can ask about some obscure jazz guitar player, and he either knows of him and or has played with him.

My best experiences over the years have been playing with the old blues guys, many times with (Magic) Dick – James Cotton, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Muddy Waters… We sat in with the Muddy Waters band long before Jerry Portnoy was in it!  We knew his stuff. One time, I think it was in Paul’s Mall in the late ’60s, and Muddy called us up to play. He called out one of his classics, and Dick just knew the harp part. So Muddy sang the first line, and Dick just nailed the Little Walter harp fill. Muddy looked around like he was seeing a ghost. I was just playing the little rhythm parts, and got off a couple of the right thing, and he gave me a little smile.

To me, those moments when you get to be on the same playing field as your heroes and they actually acknowledge that you know what you’re doing – those are the true highlights.

Tom Guerra plays guitar in Mambo Sons, mambosons.com.

This article originally appeared in VG December 2009 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

This year, the Wilsons were honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Heart is touring with Def Leppard through the fall (including a trip to Australia).

The Wilson sisters’ influence has kept them relevant. They appeared on last winter’s “VH1 Divas Salute The Troops,” their work can be heard on several commercial soundtracks, and of course, they are ever-present on classic-rock radio. Further evidence of their impact lies in the fact the sisters were recently recognized for their songwriting by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (A.S.C.A.P.), which honored them with its Founders Award. In 2010, Heart released its 13th studio album, Red Velvet Car, which debuted at #10 on the Billboard Top 200 and #3 on the Rock Albums chart. It became the band’s first top 10 album since Brigade, which was released two full decades before, and scored Adult Contemporary hit singles with “WTF” and “Hey You” despite an approach lauded by critics as having no blatant commercial aspiration, instead harkening to the band’s ’70s sound and groove.

Despite monumental success and such accolades, Wilson remains driven by a burning passion for rock-and-roll guitar.

Do you come from a musical family?

Ann and I started singing way before we were ever in a band. My family is very musical, our aunts and uncles, mom and dad, and grandparents had ukuleles and would sing old Irish pub songs, silly little tunes, even vaudeville stuff from the ’20s. So we just grew up with a lot of musical hams in our family! As kid, we’d put on little shows and productions – we’d lip-sync to our favorite records or play the piano or ukulele. When the family would drive across the country to visit grandma or whatever, we’d sing in the car.

After we saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan – which dates us just a little bit – it really made a spark. We had to learn to play guitars from that moment forward, and start making bands and playing outside of the living room and the church and the school. We started playing for money and trying to write songs. From that point forward, we were just driven to be as much like the Beatles as we could be. We were too young to think, “We should be the girlfriends of the Beatles. We just wanted to be the Beatles, you know? It was kind of before puberty, and Mom and Dad really encouraged us. I took to the guitar like a duck to water. The light bulb went on, lightning struck, and I got good really fast!

Do you remember your first guitar?

My grandmother gave Ann a nice guitar, and I was like, “Please, I gotta have a good guitar, too!” So they bought me a cheapie ³/4-size Lyle made of plywood with a sunburst finish. Somebody forgot to glue down the bridge, so it was impossible to play. And it had a pipe for a neck, so you couldn’t barre an F chord – but, in trying, my hands got very, very strong. Thankfully, I knew the difference between my bad guitar and Ann’s nylon-string better guitar, because I would have given up! But, it was 30 bucks, and my parents wanted to see if I was serious, which obviously, I was…

Wilson had her ’68 Gibson SG Junior modified with an older Bigsby, graphite saddles, and a Kent Armstrong pickup.

Who was your first “Guitar Hero”?

Well, there was the Beatles, obviously. Ann sort of had Paul taken, because, you know, girls had to have their favorite Beatle! So I had gravitated between John and George and learned all their guitar parts. Ann picked up a bass, got an imitation Höfner and a little tiny student amp, and we’d rock out and pretend we were the Beatles, all the way up to the English accents! We really wanted it bad… We learned every Beatles song!

A prototype for the Martin HD-35 Nancy Wilson model.

What was the first concert you ever went to?

In 1966, we had a group of four girls called The Viewpoints. We learned a bunch of Beatles songs and a lot of harmony-driven songs from the radio. We went to see the Beatles wearing uniforms our Mom made that matched the Beatles’. We were definitely serious about the Beatles, and still are! So in 1966, we saw the Beatles at the Seattle Coliseum. The screams were deafening! We were there with our opera glasses, and we were the only girls in the place who weren’t screaming. It was very exciting, it was one of the last shows they played, it was really cool!

After that, we started going to more rock shows; I saw Zeppelin open for Sonny and Cher. We were just kids and we were so shocked, because it was so suggestive!

How and when did you begin performing?

Well, we played a bunch of little places as The Viewpoints, including a drive-in theatre. We got guys who had equipment – drums and a bass – but it was really difficult to get gigs. We played a couple of high-school dances and church youth-group things, but there was no “real” band until Ann joined one. I couldn’t play clubs at the time because I was underage, so she went off in to a real rock outfit, and I played acoustic for awhile. Later, I joined her band in Vancouver, which was doing really well in the cabarets there. I went to college for a bit, but knew I was going to eventually join Ann’s band. When we got together, it was writing songs, going in the studio, playing clubs, and traveling across Canada.

Nancy uses this Martin DC-PA1 with an Aura pickup to play the megahit “Alone” in the live set.

What led you to quit college and join Ann’s band?

Well, I wanted to experience the university because I wanted to learn stuff. I knew I’d never graduate because I just wanted to take cool classes and get the experiences, away from Ann for a while, before I joined them and saw the world. I sensed we would never really look back and I’d never have another opportunity to experience such things. That’s how it felt to me, and it was kind of true… We were not afraid to think big – we were young, optimistic, and very hard-working.

What was the Vancouver music scene like in the early ’70s?

There was a lot of different music, a lot of clubs, which they call “cabarets.” The drinking age was lower, so our friends would come up from Seattle to see us. Ann’s band was the #1 cabaret act in Vancouver when I joined. A lot of dues were being paid, and I joined right in with the dues paying, right off the bat! Within a year and a half after I joined the band, the first album, Dreamboat Annie, came out.

Did you have any idea what was about to happen with Dreamboat Annie?

We knew it was good; we’d made ourselves happy with the way it sounded. The original mixing desk at the Mushroom Records studio had come from a famous Muscle Shoals studio – all that great Booker T. stuff was recorded on it – and it really sounded amazing! That record became an audiophile’s favorite, all the frequencies were there, it was very rich and full-sounding. A lot of digital recordings today are too top heavy, and there’s so much missing that we don’t even realize it anymore.

Prior to working with Martin on her signature model, Wilson made heavy use of this Takamine NP-16A.

Any special memories from making that first album?

I remember it taking off as soon as it was released. We made it with an independent Canadian label, Mushroom Records, because major labels turned us down – twice. So we were very much like Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter, where they just went in the car to every single radio station. Those early albums were exciting to make, because it was a real studio and we were allowed to make a real album. Ann and I used to play around recording on our daddy’s Sony reel-to-reel, but this was a real control room with an isolation booth and double-glass windows, and it just felt like the coolest thing on earth. There was no cutting and pasting, unless it was done with a razor blade and tape, so you had to really commit to a take – there was no fixing it later, you had to get it right, on the spot. If you had to splice anything in, you were sweating bullets! Sometimes, you’d play the same song 10 or 15 times, and not feel the magic. So you’d go have lunch or go outside and play basketball. Then you’d come back and get it. Because all this ephemeral, ethereal magic you’re chasing doesn’t just happen unless everyone is in the same spot at the same time. Today, you can construct things and layer things, but you can tell the difference when there’s a band playing real music live in the studio. There’s energy. We used to take amps, guitars, mixers, and go to the beach. We’d set it up in houses where we’d write and record songs to tape. I was the engineer and roadie for all those songwriting sessions, hauling stuff around.

Once you’ve done that, it’s like, “Okay, you’ll earn it now.” You really care about getting it done, instead of “Oh, I can decide later what to cut and paste.”

In the mid ’90s, you took five years to concentrate on raising your family. During this time, you were able to compose the musical scores for several well-known films. How did that experience broaden your musical perspective and songwriting?

I actually learned a lot about music by scoring movie scenes where there’s dialogue and things are happening on the screen, and the music basically needs to support what’s happening onscreen. It’s an exercise in less is more; simplifying and spreading it out, slowing it down and playing fewer notes, having more space in the music. In a way, if you disappear but you’re still there – you’re almost not there – then you’ve done your job. If you’re feeling it but not hearing it, then you’ve done your job well.

I took a lot of that with me into my songs. Instead of playing muscular, proving-it-all-the-time things where you cram in notes, it’s what you leave out that can be just as – if not more – meaningful. It’s about the spaces between the notes.

What’s it like to work with your big sister all these years?

Ann’s voice… it’s just a freak of nature! There’s something undeniable about a voice like that, and it doesn’t come along very often. We come from a military family, and we’ve always had that ethic; we pull up our socks and we troop onward! Along with our sister, Lynn, the three of us lead our family now, our parents are gone and we’re still trooping. We’ve never stopped to consider excess drama as an option. If anyone’s having feelings or opinions, we put it out there and work it out, get past it and do our jobs. I think we really lucked out with our whole family support system; we just don’t have all that extra drama to slow us down.

This Zemaitis acoustic is sister Ann Wilson’s primary stage guitar, which she uses on “These Dreams,” “Dog and Butterfly,” and” “Sand.”

What do you still love about the guitar?

I’ve just always loved the guitar. The guitar has always been my significant other, my husband… I’m married to my guitar. And I was from the minute I started to play. When I was a kid, I actually took the first good guitar I had to bed with me. I remember thinking, “Darn, this isn’t very comfortable.” But I was so committed!

I think the guitar is one of the best friends you’ll ever have. It’s your confidant, and it’ll tell you what you want to hear. But it’s not a “yes” man! It won’t tell you things that aren’t real. You can’t fake it with a guitar…. Well, I guess there is a lot of guys who do, but I’ve never been one of those fakers! I could play a barrage of notes, but I can’t impress myself that way. The guitar is a reflection of what you put in to it, giving back what you give it, just like life. Put the love in, get the love out!

Wilson has used this Japanese-copy mandolin since 1974.

Given your profession, do you grab a guitar for relaxation?

I play a bit, yeah. When I do sit down and play the piano or guitar at home, it’s a healing grace – a place to exhale and regroup.

How have your instrument preferences changed, over the course of your career?

I’ve always been a fan of vintage because I’m an analog girl – a vintage kind of girl! Those have always been the better sounds. You can hear the dirt and the time and experience in the wood. The wood itself has molecularly aligned itself musically, so there’s a magic that happens with vintage, experienced instruments. Guitars are eternal, they’re my religion.

What do you find more difficult to create, lyrics or music?

Lyrics are more difficult to pull out of yourself, especially good ones that are not too personal or too corny. It’s a tough line to walk.

Do you have a favorite guitar?

I don’t. I go through “favorite” guitars all the time. I have a few at home that I cherish – my old Sunrise acoustic that was custom built for me in ’76 by Ed Myronic in Vancouver. That’s one of my all-time favorites. It was there with me at the beginning, it sounds great, and it’s done a lot of scoring with me. It’s a really good studio friend. I did most of my big film scores with that guitar.

And I have the new prototype Martin, which is really great; there’s a brand new “old soul” in my house!

What about your famous Lake Placid Blue Tele?

I’d always had that exact guitar in my head – that color on that guitar was an icon for me. It’s been the main electric in my life since the early ’80s – my all-around go-to guy! I love the Tele thing in general, more than the Strat thing. As a player, I come from an acoustic rock/rhythm place. I play acoustic in a much more aggressive rock style. For me, it’s almost a rhythm thing – part drum – and a Tele can handle that approach better than most guitars. It holds up to my overplaying, so it’s a good transitional electric for me.

Wilsons’s ’63 Fender Telecaster has a PAF humbucker in the neck, a single-coil in the bridge, and Bourns pots.

Were you surprised at how well Red Velvet Car was received by fans and the press?

It came out higher on Billboard than any of our albums ever – at #10. We couldn’t have been happier about that, because we’d been working pretty hard on it for a long time (laughs)!

What can you tell us about the new record you’re working on?

A really great producer can always make it feel like a first take. That’s what we love about Ben Mink, our producer for Red Velvet Car and the new record we’re working on with him. He has the same work ethic – we write stuff in the same room together, then when we push that red button to record, we’re just trying to find it on the spot and get that excitement of that feeling when we first did it. We’re going for a more rock-and-roll, harder-edged thing, so I’ll probably be playing more electric than acoustic. Red Velvet Car had a more-aggressive acoustic and rock sound, but I think we’re going for even more rock tones on this new one.

What did it mean to you and Ann to be presented with the A.S.C.A.P. Founder’s Award?

We couldn’t have been more thrilled to be recognized for our songwriting, especially when we’re out there in the big world with people like Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell – incredible writers who came out of our generation and even before. It meant the world to us. It also renewed our inspiration to keep writing, because sometimes you tell yourself “Nobody listens, nobody cares.” Being acknowledged for something more than just hair or makeup or videos from the ’80s keeps us going.

In this business, the biggest challenges are personal. I’ve tried to balance all that out, as a woman and a mother, especially, and managed to be in a rock band all at the same time. There are not really a lot of bands like Heart, we don’t fit any mold, and never have. We’re a real rock band, a hard-working rock outfit. We blazed the trail, and I hope to see more girls in rock bands defy those odds and do it, too.

Wilson’s acoustic-amp rig uses two Orange 4120 cabinets with Celestion Vintage 30 speakers. They were painted black at Wilson’s request during the Night at Sky Church DVD shoot. The amps are Trace Elliot TA200 models with neodymium speakers.

Wilson has used these Bruce-Zinky-designed Fender Tonemaster amps onstage since 2003.

This article originally appeared in VG October 2011 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

One of the most influential guitarists in hard rock history, Michael Schenker has imbued the music of UFO, Scorpions, and his own MSG with soaring, light-speed guitar solos.

More recently, he released Gipsy Lady, an album by his Schenker-Barden Acoustic Project, one of several non-electric projects he’s working on, and he also maintains a brisk career with the Michael Schenker Group. We spoke with him about his gear, technique, and omnipresent V-style guitars.

How did the Acoustic Project come about?
I was curious to hear how my acoustic instrumentals would sound with vocals, so I asked [former MSG singer] Gary Barden to have a go on it. When I listened to what Gary did with them, I was amazed. So we carried on until the album was complete. It was that simple.

How do you adjust your technique when playing acoustic?
I don’t really do anything special, but in general, acoustic guitar needs to be played differently than electric because of the heavier strings – if you use a light gauge, the guitar does not sound too good. The main thing is that I am not bending strings as much as electric and, without as much sustain, you need to play very melodically to touch the hearts of others. It is always good to put melody in – that’s part of my overall approach, electric or acoustic.

Tell us about your acoustic Flying V.
I spotted that guitar at a photo session for Dean Guitars in the States. I said to their CEO, Elliott Rubinson, “You never told me that you make this kind of V,” and asked if I could have a couple of them. I played it in Newcastle at an Acoustic Project performance and it worked out great. I plugged it into my Marshall with a bit of dirt to make it sound more rock and roll.

What amps and effects do you take on the road?
I use two JCM 50-watt Marshall two-channel amps and the Marshall cabinets with Celestion greenbacks. My only effects are a Dunlop Dimebag wah and a Boss delay and chorus. The other pedals are just volume controls, a Marshall footswitch, and a Boss tuner.

You’ve used many Flying V’s over the years, and now use the Dean Michael Schenker V. How do they compare to your old Gibsons?
The Deans are much stronger and more solidly built than my old Gibsons, and they “sing” extremely well. I think the pickups are DiMarzios – I’m not much of a technician, so I can’t really give you a whole description of the electronics. I tend to do things by ear and feel only. I don’t even know all the different names for scales, but I can spot a great sound immediately.

Your classic UFO rig in the ’70s was a 50-watt Marshall and a wah. Tell us about that setup and what it did for your signature tone.
It was one of those nice, older plexi Marshalls, but you needed to know what you wanted, sound-wise, in order to get a good tone. With the wah pedal, I used to just sweep through the range and stop when I found the sound I like. Then I just left it in that position – the “sweet spot.” It was sometimes a Vox or occasionally an old Dunlop. I just plugged the Flying V straight in to the wah and into the amp, which was probably set with everything on 10.

Give us some thoughts on your guitar legacy.
With the Scorpions, I did my first album at age 15, called Lonesome Crow. On the album was my first-ever composition, titled “In Search of Peace of Mind”; Klaus Meine wrote the lyrics and it has remained important to me throughout my life. I was influenced by the original rock players, like Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and Leslie West, but I didn’t copy their licks after I was 17 – I was quick in breaking out of that influence and developing my own style. I knew exactly what I wanted as far as tone, playing, and writing. So, to answer your question, what I brought to the Scorpions, UFO and MSG was originality, but also a lot of feel and a strong sense of melody. Of course, the Scorpions eventually developed into an original band all their own, especially with the writing between Klaus and my brother Rudolf. Rudolf writes very much like me, but simpler. We are both very emotion-based guitarists and writers.

This article originally appeared in VG October 2009 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Ritenour’s Yamaha Six String Theory Guitar Competition recently came to a close, and 16-year-old guitarist Shon Boublil was crowned the winner. Boublil bested 13 competitors from around the world and won a scholarship to the Berklee School of Music. He also gets an endorsement deal from Yamaha guitars and will make a guest appearance on Ritenour’s Six String Theory CD.

Along with Rit, the album features Keb’ Mo’, B.B. King, George Benson, Taj Mahal, Steve Lukather, John Scofield, Joe Bonamassa, Pat Martino, Mike Stern, Neal Schon, Slash, Vince Gill, Jonny Lang, Andy McKee, Joe Robinson, Guthrie Govan, and Shon Boublil.

What’s it like judging guitarists with such a high level of musicianship?
It wasn’t easy, especially since we did something that was quite unusual. We had six different styles being represented. So at the end of the story it was very difficult to have the parameters of how you pick one guitarist over another who plays completely different stylistically. We were also judging how well they were doing within their own genre, and how well they were fairing against the others when it finally got down to the top six.

The guitarists were amazing, but the judges had a tough job.
A couple of guitar players I thought were in the running earlier who had done really well in the first round, didn’t do quite as well in the second round, and that’s sort of the nature of the beast. I’ve done judging of guitar competitions a couple of times; I did one at the Montreux Jazz Festival two years in a row and it was exactly the same thing. The first round, some guys really shine. The second round… didn’t go so well. Then some other guy came roaring through.

Do you think the quality of the performances differ from round to round because of song choices or nerves?
I can pinpoint a couple guys who were pure nerves. But I can also pinpoint a couple who maybe didn’t think they would get that far and were not as prepared on their second tune. Or they picked a vehicle that didn’t feature themselves as much. [Players need to consider] all the parameters of what could happen. Sometimes, experience will do that, and sometimes it’s just the pure artistry of the particular guitarist.

Being seasoned helps…
That didn’t hold true with our winner. He’d only been playing the guitar for five years, but his nerves were rock-steady. He played his hardest piece second and it was a seven-minute extravaganza. I think he had probably played them in competitions before, or at concerts. The other guitarists, I’m sure, played their pieces before in public, as well. It was nice because the top six were all winners within their category, and all fine guitarists.

Talk about the Six String Theory album.
It’s my concept from beginning to end, but I’m not on every tune. I am on quite a few of the pieces. There’s 15 songs in all and 20 guitarists represented.

Including the winner of the competition.
Absolutely. Shon did a beautiful job. His tone on classical guitar is wonderful and we might wind up putting his song at the end of the album, right after Guthrie Govan, which is a bit of a dichotomy. He did an awesome track called “Five.”

You’ve got a ton of great artists on this recording, from John Scofield to B.B. King.
What I love about it is that it doesn’t sound like a bunch of guitar players just shredding and showing off. It’s a very musical record. I kept the arranging and the orchestration rhythm-section oriented. It’s really just keyboards, bass, and drums. Most of the time, the accompaniment instrument is organ, so it has a thematic rhythm section. The guitars, because there are so many different colors and sounds, were the orchestration and color. The tunes are cool, the playing is cool, and it’s really a shared experience. I think anyone can enjoy the album tremendously. It’s not just for guitar players.

Sounds like it’s varied, as well, with Vince Gill, George Benson, and Neal Schon.
It has a lot of variety. There’s some combinations probably never heard; Steve Lukather, Neal Schon, and I play one tune and jam at the end. Lukather and I are on a couple – we wrote one together called “In Your Dreams,” which is a big rock ballad. It’s one of the strongest tunes on the record. We’re also covering “Shape Of My Heart” by Sting. There’s four or five tunes I’m heavily featured on, along with the other guitar players. And I’m playing rhythm guitar on a number of other tracks.

On the B.B. King track “Why I Sing The Blues,” we have B.B. King, Keb’ Mo’, Vince Gill, and Jonny Lang playing and singing, with me on rhythm guitar. Joe Bonamassa and Robert Cray do the Tracy Chapman tune “Give Me One Reason.”

Pat Martino is on the record, too.
That’s a great track. It’s organ-based, with Joey DeFrancesco, Will Kennedy, myself, and Pat. It’s a tune I wrote called “LP” which has sort of a double meaning. Lee and Pat, but it’s also written for Les Paul. I wrote the melody with kind of a modern version of Les Paul in mind. It’s a pretty uptempo be-bop tune with Pat and I soloing with Joey DeFrancesco. Most of the album was cut live with the guitarists in the room which was really a blessing.

This article originally appeared in VG December 2010 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Lifeson with a PRS in 2004.

In the summer of ’68, Lifeson joined friends Jeff Jones on bass and John Rutsey on drums to form a band they called The Projection. Jones left after one gig and was replaced by a schoolmate named Geddy Lee as the band evolved to become Rush. Six years later, as they prepared for their first American tour, management decided that Rutsey, whose diabetes was exacerbated by what they saw as excessive use of alcohol, couldn’t handle the stress of touring. So, Neil Peart took over on drums, and would subsequently become the band’s primary lyricist. In the decades that followed, Rush amassed more than 24 gold and 14 platinum albums, placing them in the company of the Beatles and Rolling Stones in terms of sales.

Their eponymous 1974 debut reflected the influences of Led Zeppelin, Cream, Deep Purple, and The Who. But by the next album, 1975’s Fly By Night, they began relying on their own musical instincts and Peart’s more-literary lyrics. With the 1976 release of 2112, the band was hitting its stride and released a string of impressive efforts leading up to 1981’s Moving Pictures, which includes its best-known song (“Tom Sawyer”) and remains its biggest seller.

Through the group’s many musical changes, Lifeson has provided unique guitar work on electric and acoustic guitar, as well as on mandolin, bouzouki, mandola, and keyboards. In concert, he incorporates a multitude of electronic effects, including bass pedal synthesizers.

Rush uses a MIDI controller in concert, which allows them to re-create the intricacies of their album sounds without having to add musicians or employ backing tracks.

On the band’s just-completed tour, Lifeson used several Gibson guitars, including his trademark ES-355, a ’58 reissue Les Paul sunburst, ’59 reissue Les Paul with tobacco-sunburst finish, and a Howard Roberts Fusion, along with two Martin acoustics (D-10 and D-12) and a Garrison OM-20 octave mandolin.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has just completed this year’s inductions, and Rush has once again been bypassed. What are you feelings on that?

It’s not a big concern. It’s a business that makes a lot of money and I have no problem with that, but it’s not a real representation of what rock music is about. There are certainly a lot bands in there that I admire, like Zeppelin and U2. But if we’re not wanted there, I really don’t care. Being inducted is not going to change my life at all.

As an aspiring guitarist, were you more impressed with Jimi Hendrix, or Eric Clapton with Cream?

Oh, from the very beginning, Hendrix blew my mind. He was just amazing. There was no thinking about ever reaching his level. Everything he did seemed so nuanced and out of this world, especially at that time. You could never replicate that tone, or how he played those things. I certainly didn’t have the dexterity to do it. As a kid, Clapton’s solos seemed a little easier and more approachable. I remember sitting at my record player and moving the needle back and forth to get the solo in “Spoonful.” But there was nothing I could do with Hendrix.

What about Jimmy Page as an influence?

Jimmy Page has always been my absolute guitar hero. From the first time I heard Zeppelin’s first album, I wanted to play just like him. I wanted to dress just like him. When I finally got to meet him in ’98, I was so nervous, like a little kid. My hand was shaking when I handed him a copy of my solo album, Victor, on which I had written something saying how much he meant to me.

Any other major influences outside of the usual suspects?

I loved Steve Hackett’s playing with Genesis in the early ’70s; the way he worked melodies into the context of the music. He would stay in the background for the rhythmic stuff, but when needed, add a line that echoed or complemented a keyboard. It was always tasteful and sounded great.

You saw The Who play live in ’67, when you were 14 years old. What do you remember most about the show?

They were opening for Herman’s Hermits, and were simply amazing. I remember watching Townshend, noticing his strumming, and how the voicing in his chords was unique and covered a lot of territory. It was incredible.

You started taking classical guitar lessons when you were 17…

Yes, and I was very serious. I enjoyed the discipline, but the following year, 1971, the drinking age in Ontario was lowered from 21 to 18, and we went from playing two or three gigs a month to playing six days a week in clubs, and sometimes Saturday afternoon. Everything became full-time, so I had to give up the lessons.

Was it a matter of ego that you decided Rush didn’t need a second guitar player?

Actually, I was very self-conscious about my playing in those days. And we did have a couple of other guitar players; Geddy’s brother-in-law played rhythm guitar and keyboards the first year. Then we had Mitch Bossie for awhile, but he was more about image than playing, so it didn’t work out.

There are still times when I’d like to have another guitar player in the band… most times (laughs)!

In Beyond The Lighted Stage, you say 2112 was a do-or-die album because the record company was considering dropping the band.

Well, there was definitely pressure to do something similar to our first album, which really reflected our roots and was very Zeppelinesque. Before we released 2112, we did Caress Of Steel, which was much more experimental than our early ones and an important part of our growth. But because it was a commercial failure, there was a lot of pressure to make something Mercury considered more palatable to a rock audience, not so esoteric.

That idea probably didn’t fly well with the band.

Definitely not. Even though all of us were very broke at the time, we weren’t going to buckle and remake our first album. We figured, “At the end of the day, Rush is about who we are and what we are. If we can’t do the album on our own terms, what’s the point? We may as well go back to working straight jobs instead of becoming a bar band for a few years then ending everything.”

So we went into the album with the passion of having to fight the establishment again. And the music resonated with fans and became very successful. It really bought us our independence and freedom from ever having anyone at a record company influence or control how we do our music. A lot of musicians from other bands look up to us for that, because that’s the ideal for any musician.

To what do you attribute the enduring popularity of “Tom Sawyer?”

There’s the spirit of the lyrics – that swagger. There’s that keyboard opening, that bass sound… that’s a real signature. Neil’s drumming is spectacular on it. Every time we play the song live, it’s a challenge for him to reproduce it. I guess, structurally, the song is very sound. It’s not particularly repetitive, and has some interesting dynamics. I could never have never imagined that 30 years later, it’s still very active in terms of requests that it gets for television and film usage, and, of course, radio airplay.

You reportedly only did five takes on it. Is that typical of the way you work?

Yes, most of my solos are like that. I prefer doing very few takes. Over the years, I’ve found that when I’m soloing, I get stale very quickly. I’m too self-aware of my playing. Everything works best for me when I’m impulsive.

Which three of or four Rush tracks do you think best display your virtuosity? 

Boy, that’s a tough question. “Limelight” definitely has one of my favorite solos. “Kid Gloves” is probably my second favorite; really off-the-cuff. Listening to it always makes me smile. “Natural Science” is always a challenge to execute in concert.

What were the first guitars you used after the band became popular?

I bought a Gibson ES-335 on our first tour, then got a Les Paul in ’76. Those were my main guitars until the late ’70s. I also had a Strat as a backup and for a different sound. I dropped a Bill Lawrence  humbucker in it, and a Floyd Rose vibrato. In ’76, I got another 335 – my white one – which became my main guitar. I love that guitar and still use it on tour and in the studio. It’s a perfect weight, and has real creamy tone.

In recent years, Lifeson has relied predominantly on ’50s reissue Gibson Les Pauls like this one for his live sound.

What were your next ones? 

I started using a Howard Roberts Fusion as my main guitar for a few years, then a Signature, which was a Canadian-built copy guitar that was awful to play – very uncomfortable – but had a particular sound I liked. The last few years, I’ve used Gibsons almost exclusively. There’s nothing like having a low-slung Les Paul over my shoulder! The tonality and playing is so great, so traditional.

You’ve also used PRS guitars. Would you agree that Les Pauls typically have a heavier sound than a PRS?

Most of my experience has been with the PRS CE, which has a smaller body, which gives it a smaller presence and tighter midrange. The vibrato is fantastic; you don’t need a locking nut and I never had any tuning issues with them. The Les Paul seems more expressive to me. Their sustain is different, and the guitar resonates in a different way.

1) Lifeson has used a Gibson EDS-1275 in concert since the mid ’70s. Currently, he uses this 2002 model. 2) Lifeson’ trademark ’70s Gibson ES-355 has been heavily modified through the years. 3) Lifeson used this Gibson B-45-12 on several early tracks, including “Closer to the Heart,” which remains one of the band’s most popular songs.

How is work on the new album coming along?

Well, our intent was to have it out this year, but after we started it, we thought, “Let’s go on a short tour, get in shape, then finish it.” Then the tour did so well that there was pressure on us to do another run, then we decided to do another leg. We’ll take a few months off after it’s finished, and complete songwriting. Geddy and I are working on several new songs to balance out the six we’ve already written.

As a band that has been recording for nearly 40 years, it must be a real challenge to come up with new ideas and avoid becoming a caricature of yourself.

That’s always our ultimate worry. We’re always concerned about repeating ourselves, always looking to go in different directions. But it’s difficult. You don’t want to go toofar outside what you’re known for just because you think you have to. Lately, I’ve been trying to challenge myself with different tunings, particularly in the context of songwriting, because the guitar becomes totally different, and having Geddy play off what I’m doing with the tunings sometimes takes us in new directions. I think we have a pretty good understanding of what our older fans want. I don’t think they want us to keep doing the same old thing.

From the early ’80s through mid decade, Lifeson (here with bandmate Geddy Lee) played modified Fender Stratocasters with Bill Lawrence humbucking pickups in the bridge position.

Lifeson in ’79 with his trademark Gibson ES-355.

Is there such a thing a typical Rush fan?

I don’t know. Since the documentary, we have a new level of popularity and a broader fan base. There are a lot more females at shows than in the past because there are things in the documentary that women relate to – the connections we have with our families, and the women we married when we were young and have been with ever since.

The typical Rush fan? Hard to say. Probably fairly intelligent; very interested in music and information. Knowledgeable.

Do you think rock music is healthy in 2011, or are its best days in the past?

Well, a lot of the music on classic-rock radio has great staying power. When that music was made, times were very different – the listening experience, the presentation. Now, communication is instantaneous and broad. Yeah, there’s a lot of lousy music around, but there are also a lot of different kinds. You have to look hard to find a niche you’re interested in.

I have to admit, music doesn’t connect with me the way it did when I was younger; when I really enjoyed the experience of spending the time exploring the talents of a particular artist. Also, having a nice big album cover to look at while I was listening to the music was a much richer experience than downloading and having an iPod with 1,000 songs.

It’s been a very long time since rock dominated the music charts.

Yeah! What happened? Is it because of the quality of music? This generation has grown up on different influences. Rap and hip-hop isn’t my cup of tea. I try to be open-minded about it, but honestly I don’t see any real quality there. I recently had to bring my TV into a place to get repaired, and while I was standing in the queue, I was watching a huge TV on the wall. The sound was turned off, and there was some concert footage of Ricky Martin with all this dancing. It looked so ridiculous. Music is all about dancing now. To me, it has lost the plot. Is all that dancing really more important to people than real music?

What’s the secret for keeping a band together as long as Rush?

Well, I think mainly it’s that we’ve always gotten along. We keep things light and fun, and have always been a great challenge and inspiration to each other. Geddy and I will get together to talk about what we’re going to do next, and we’ll sit around, drink coffee, laugh, and fart. He’s still my best friend in the world. We just happen to be in a band together. Me, Geddy, and Neil are like a brotherhood. We’re family, and we work hard at staying as one.

This article originally appeared in VG September 2011 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Robben Ford. All photos by Neil Zlozower.

There’s never been a shortage of young guitar hotshots, but in recent years, particularly among blues players, these phenoms seem to be promoted more for their age than their playing. The early work of Robben Ford helps put all this hubbub in perspective.

In 1970, when the 18-year-old guitarist/saxophonist came out of Ukiah, in Northern California, he was quickly hired by harmonica great Charlie Musselwhite, along with older brother, Patrick, on drums.

The pair stayed with Musselwhite nine months and (with Robben now 19) then reformed their previous outfit, the Charles Ford Band, named for their father. There was never any hype surrounding Robben’s age, possibly because the group also featured the staggering harp playing of his younger brother, Mark, who was all of 17. Also, in spite of their popularity, there was no label or publicity machinery behind them.

The quartet’s ability to shift from lowdown Chicago blues to Coltrane-inspired jazz was as impressive and convincing as it was virtually unprecedented, and though it broke up in less than a year, the impact of the group, and of that chapter of Robben’s guitar playing, is still being felt.

But perhaps the biggest difference between Ford and later young guns was that, even though he was inspired by Mike Bloomfield’s work on the Paul Butterfield Blues Band album, he had a distinct, original voice on guitar, even at such as early stage – a voice that has become a major influence in blues, jazz, and rock guitar.

The fact that he was that good at 18 and 19 begs the question – what was he like at 17 or 16? According to Patrick, “By the time Robben was 16 years old, he was a serious contender, and I knew few guitar players who impressed as much as him. Though Robben always took from other guitar players, he was also always original. I think the saxophone kept channels open for him that others might not have experienced.”

Lest one views that as family pride more than objective analysis, consider ex-leader Musselwhite’s comments. “The chords and also the rhythms that Robben would feed me, providing a pad for me, would spark responses in me that I wouldn’t usually think of,” he said. “It would be as if he gave me the insight or the energy to soar, the freedom to fly. I would feel propelled and able to play my truest feelings. There are a lot of technically great musicians, but Robben is one of the rare ones who, with all that technique, still play straight from the heart. And that’s where I’m always coming from, so Robben somehow instinctively knows just what to provide to allow a guy like me to be set free and play what I feel with no distractions.”

Inevitably, Robben’s guitar took him around the world – literally, beginning shortly after the Ford Band’s breakup, with singer Jimmy Witherspoon, who was featured on the first blues album Robben ever owned (a Verve collection called Blues Box).

David Grissom, who later played guitar on Ford’s Mystic Mile CD, first heard Robben on a PBS special with “Spoon.” “I’ve been a huge fan ever since,” he says. “The way he was playing blues with an aggressive attitude and jazz phrasing knocked me out. I’ve had the pleasure of playing with him live and in the studio, and he is the epitome of taste and tone. He is such a strong player with a deep knowledge of music, and he loves to burn. With Robben, every note means something.”

The association with Spoon was a fruitful one for both parties, with the increased exposure bringing Ford to the attention of the L.A. Express, who were looking for a guitarist for an upcoming tour backing Joni Mitchell – someone to fill the shoes of Larry Carlton, who played on her then-current Court And Spark album.

Neither a fusion fan nor Mitchell devotee, Ford accepted the challenge, which yielded Mitchell’s live Miles Of Aisles album and more studio and touring work – with George Harrison. (At the time of the ex-Beatle’s 1974 tour, Ford was 22.)

Suddenly the “blues player” was in demand for sessions ranging from Barry Manilow to Kiss – in a resume that eventually encompassed Bob Dylan, Kenny Loggins, Little Feat, David Sanborn, Michael McDonald, Herbie Mann, Jennifer Warnes, Georgie Fame, Burt Bacharach, Dave Koz, Rickie Lee Jones, John Mayall, Tommy Emmanuel, Sadao Watanabe, Bob Malach, Boz Scaggs, Charlie Haden, Kenny Garret, Bonnie Raitt, and numerous others.

Sandwiched between solo albums was a six-month stint with jazz legend Miles Davis and several years with the Yellowjackets’ original incarnation, which began life as the rhythm section on Ford’s 1979 debut, Inside Story.

He formed the blues-rock trio the Blue Line with bassist Roscoe Beck and drummer Tom Brechtlein – yielding three fine albums – and reunited with former Yellowjackets bandmate, bassist Jimmy Haslip, for the fusiony Jing Chi, with Vinnie Colaiuta on drums.

His career path has had its share of left turns and even 180-degree about-faces. Split between New York and Los Angeles core groups (keyboardist Bernie Worrell, bassist Will Lee, and drummer Charlie Drayton on the former; keyboardist Larry Goldings, bassist Chris Cheney, and drummer Gary Novak on the latter), his brand-new CD (his third for Concord Records) is more song-oriented than most of the Blue Line’s output, but has a healthier guitar quotient than 1999’s Supernatural.

Robben penned most of the material, with “River Of Soul” and “How Deep In The Blues Do You Want To Go” co-written with Nashville tunesmiths Danny Flowers and Gary Nicholson, respectively, and Ke’b Mo’ assisting on Ford’s tribute to the king of the blues, “Riley B. King.”

“Too Much” was written by Robben’s nephew (Patrick’s son), Gabriel Ford, and “You’re Gonna Need A Friend” was co-written by Robben’s wife, Anne Kerry Ford, whose collection of Kurt Weill songs, Weill, Robben produced and played on (for the couple’s Illyria label).

Much like his peripatetic career, an interview with Robben Ford can be self-deprecating one moment, outspoken the next; humorous, then provocative. But the 55-year-old is always interesting and, as the title of his CD implies, speaks the Truth.

Was there a specific concept or aim with the new CD?

I wanted it to be what I would call a blues record, but really of the times in its content. Contemporary themes, not a throwback. Obviously, my whole life I’ve worked to try to make blues music that I felt was relevant. But material is everything. How do you write a new blues? That’s a tough one [laughs], because the whole vernacular is of a time. So the language you use is important. And I always try to be honest in my delivery and who I am; I don’t want to pretend to be something that I’m not. But the political situation the way it is today, and the war in Iraq, the way money is, gas prices – that is the blues today. So I deliberately wanted to reflect that in this material. And I actually feel like I kind of pulled it off.

People like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Cray, and Charlie Musselwhite have at times deviated from the 12-bar form but maintained a bluesy feel. To find a new version of the blues, do you need to go outside the structure?

I do. To me, a song like “Lateral Climb” succeeds in talking about things that people go through every day, and it’s a shuffle with blues guitar all over it, but it’s not a straight 12-bar format. It has the quality of being traditional, but the subject matter is so relevant, I think it succeeds in that way. You can’t do a whole bunch of those, or the whole thing starts to lose its power. As opposed to writing the blues, we’re writing songs now. But there is that central element of very basic, human, honest experience. That’s the thread, and that’s the blues part.

You seemed to step up the songwriting element on Supernatural.

What I literally said to myself was, “I want to write a record of songs where I can sit down with a guitar and play for somebody.” – where that in itself would be complete. Because for the most part, most of my music almost requires a band. I felt like I finally came into my own as a songwriter on Supernatural – like, I can hang with other songwriters, and I have something to bring. And two songs were co-written with Michael McDonald on that CD, which made me feel good – to hang out with him and write and not feel out of my depth.

Objective opinion was, “There’s not enough guitar on this record.” I didn’t feel that way about it, but everybody else did. And really there’s guitar all over it.

It does seem important for someone like me to keep that guitar way up front. And it’s what I do best, no matter what. No matter how hard I work at my singing or my songwriting, guitar playing is what I do best. So on Truth we made a real concerted effort to keep that guitar up there.

A lot of your reviews, by the press and also consumer reviews on websites like Amazon, refer to “the two Robben Fords” – meaning the blues singer/guitarist and then the fusion instrumentalist.

It’s not really like changing hats for me; I’m a musician, and I’m comfortable in a variety of situations mainly because I’m not changing hats. It’s the same guy who shows up, no matter what the gig. Whatever the music is, that allows that side of me as a musician to come out. But to me, it’s all one thing: I’m a musician. I don’t think of myself as this kind of a musician or that kind of a musician – although, ultimately, whenever I pick up a guitar and start to play, it sounds like blues. That’s the first thing that happens when I start playing the guitar; it’s the foundation, at the root of everything. I’ve had way too many people refer to me as “blues guitarist Robben Ford” to not start to believe it [laughs]!

When you get called to do a session, are they calling you to do your sort of signature style, or are there cases where they just want a good, all-around guitarist, like a session chameleon?

I haven’t done a session since I can remember, except for little things here and there. Back in those days, I think people expected guitar players who were associated with the L.A. scene to be eclectic. And there were people who thought, “Robben Ford’s a great guitar player. He can play anything, so we’ll just call him” – like the bag Larry Carlton was put in. And I did get called for a very broad gamut of things.

Were there sessions where you felt like a fish out of water?

Only when I had to read. I can look at a piece of paper and tell you what the notes are, and I can figure out the rhythms, but I can’t sight-read.

So what would happen if that was what they thought they were getting?

Well, I would be in trouble [laughs]. I kind of figured out pretty quickly who to say yes to and who to say no to. And it got around. Eventually people knew, “Okay, you don’t call Robben for this or that.” Tommy Tedesco had this running joke of, like, “The guy who wrote the book on” this or that. I was “Sight-Reading By Robben Ford” [laughs] – which was pretty funny, man.

But no matter what the situation was, whether I loved their music or not, I went into all of those situations with a lot of respect for the artist, and I didn’t know what was going to happen. In other words, I always felt challenged.

Instead of being the guy who makes fusion records sometimes and blues records other times, have you thought about trying to combine it all into one thing, like a hybrid?

Well, that’s sort of been the idea all along. Certainly with Supernatural and again with the new album, I feel like it’s the closest I’ve gotten to that – although it’s a pretty ballsy, guitar-oriented record. There’s a certain amount of harmonic sophistication, like on “Peace On My Mind” and “River Of Soul” – some chords you don’t hear elsewhere. But, ultimately, people seem to need to have a handle, a label to put on you, or they just don’t know what to do with you. And I totally get it and understand that. For me, though, it’s been a difficult thing to grapple with, because you want to be free to make your music, and I am very eclectic, so it’s been tough.

You would seem to be a good argument for there being such a thing as natural talent, and your family would make a strong case for genetics.

Yeah, I think so. But, for me, I’m Buddhist, and I personally believe in reincarnation. So I think it’s all the same. It’s just like I’ve spent more lifetimes doing it than somebody else. I truly believe that people are no different, in a certain sense, and we all have the same capacities. But our karma is such that certain habits we’ve developed over, I would say, lifetimes lead to this manifestation.

Was playing sax before taking up guitar an advantage?

It’s hard to say if it’s a chicken-or-egg thing. That was the first instrument to really strike me – like, “Man, I want to do that!” So I liked saxophone players. But I didn’t hear that many. I heard a lot more guitar players and started playing guitar two or three years later. The only sax players I’d heard were on surf records and Paul Desmond on “Take Five.” So it wasn’t like I was being influenced, per se, on the saxophone; I was just blowing the thing. I think my saxophone playing probably sounded like my guitar playing when I was young. But as I grew older, the guitar playing started getting more influenced by saxophone players. The guitar was something that came a lot more naturally to me.

(LEFT) 1960 Telecaster. (RIGHT) Fender Duo-Sonic, ca. 1959-’60.

Who were your early guitar influences?

Mike Bloomfield was the first actual influence. I wanted to sound like him; I wanted to be him. By the time I saw him he was in the Electric Flag.

Then there was an avalanche after discovering that first Butterfield record – Eric Clapton with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Jimi Hendrix. Through going down to the Fillmore and Winterland to see those guys, I was exposed to B.B. King and Albert King – those two in particular – and then a little bit later Albert Collins. B.B. was just a revelation. In fact, he was on the bill with the Electric Flag; I didn’t even know who B.B. King was. And it was the greatest night of my life! I swear to God, when I think about all of the shows I’ve ever seen, I think that was the greatest night of my life. Man!

I was at the show where John Mayall and Albert King opened for Jimi Hendrix [February, 1968]. Hendrix was so amazing. That was a moment for me, too, because when we arrived that night, Albert King was already onstage playing a slow blues. And he had the band down to a whisper. That was a big moment for me; that’s when I started playing really soft. It went into my body. The atmosphere in the room was so deep; it really impacted me.

But I was so disappointed in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. They were just sad. And Mick Taylor is probably my favorite of all those [English] guitar players. But they were just a bore.

The Charles Ford Band would do stone blues, and obviously had an affinity for that, and then shift gears to doing a John Coltrane song or something by Freddie Hubbard or Dave Brubeck. What other bands back then were doing that, if any?

Mmm… I think it was pretty unique. But certainly the Butterfield band and Charlie [Musselwhite] did. The Butterfield band doing “The Work Song” was a real parallel to what we were trying to do.

You guys took it further, though.

Well, we went further out, yeah. Whether or not we played any better is questionable, but we sure had our hearts in it.

After you and Patrick left Musselwhite’s band, that edition of the Charles Ford Band lasted less than a year – yet 36 years later guitar players and bands exist that are still largely based on what the Ford Band was doing, especially in Northern California.

That’s great. It makes me feel good. It’s certainly something that I’m proud of. But it was a very hard life. We were broke; we were not eating; it was rough. And Mark, even today, comes and goes – from playing music to not playing music. I mean, you can bet he hasn’t picked up a harp in a year. Whether or not he ever will again, no one ever knows.

For someone as young as you were, it’s pretty significant that you already had your own voice on the instrument, and it was strong enough that people are still copying the sound and style you established at 19 or 20.

I think the element that developed was confidence – and relaxation. That took a while for me – to have that sort of confidence outside a very small circle. Because there were musicians who were so much more advanced than I, and I knew it. Back then I had an almost bipolar relationship with my music and my instrument. One day I thought I was a badass, and the next day I thought I sucked – pretty intensely. It was a very powerful, passionate, emotional time, all of that. You can imagine – I was 19, Mark was 17, and it was a hard life. I mean, we did not have money. We were happy just to have someplace to play.

In terms of the badass side, you seem to rise to the challenge of jamming with other guitar players.

You know, I swear that competing is something I abhor. But there are occasional moments that I get scared, but I know that I scare them too, so it’s okay [laughs]. When Larry Carlton and I go out there every night, you can bet he can throw down. Mike Landau, too. He’s a killer guitar player; he’s very creative; he can improvise for a long time. He scares me from time to time. It’s kind of exciting. Or Eric Johnson – to me, he’s just a ridiculously good guitar player.

It kind of comes back to what I was saying about confidence. More than anything, that’s really what I’ve built, which allowed me to just relax. And also feeling like I had something to offer – because I wasn’t competing with anyone else, nor was I competing with myself.

There was a period when you were writing and playing jazz that would not be classified as fusion.

Fusion was something that I got kind of roped into with the L.A. Express. That’s when fusion became something I learned to embrace.

I think the first fusion I heard was probably the Crusaders, because they had a hit with “Put It Where You Want It.” And I really thought that was just awful music. I thought it was like a commercialized version of jazz. I was such a hotheaded, hormonal punk; I was a purist, in my mind, where jazz and blues were concerned. I came to appreciate that stuff much later, after meeting those people and playing with them and realizing what it was they were doing. I saw the creativity and craftsmanship and all the things that make up what good music is.

What was fusion then – the commercial, mass-appeal version of jazz – is now so-called “smooth jazz.”

Yeah. There’s not a lot to say about that. It’s not very inspired, I would say. It’s serving a purpose that is other than musical, certainly other than artistic – in terms of stretching and growing as a musician.

Where did your chordal and harmonic vocabulary come from?

I learned all my chords out of the Mickey Baker book. So when I was with Charlie, in particular, I was playing the Mickey Baker book stuff, learning to incorporate that into a blues setting. I had a tape recorder, and I would tape myself playing these Mickey Baker chord progressions, and then I would try to improvise over them. And I tried to incorporate all of that into the gig with Charlie. And, of course, the Charles Ford Band followed that, and we started stretching that even further.

But I don’t feel that I really became a confident accompanist until my 30s – where I felt really good about what I was doing. I would say particularly after I played with Miles. That, for me, was a turning point, and I was 33. After that experience, I basically felt like, “Okay, if I can hang with this guy, and he likes me, I can play with anybody.” He would compliment me, and that made me really feel like I had something to offer pretty much in any situation. Truthfully, I’ll tell you, prior to that it wasn’t unusual for me to feel out of my depth in certain situations.

Most of the jazz influences you talk about are horn players. Did you ever get into many jazz guitarists?

I like Jim Hall a lot, and I listened to Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell a bit, and I had one Barney Kessel record I used to listen to. I’ve been told that I have a little bit of that Wes Montgomery phrasing in my jazz playing, and I could see how that would come about, having listened to him so much. Gary Peacock told me I sounded like Barney Kessel to him. So anything that happened in that way was just through osmosis, through listening; it wasn’t that I tried very directly to sound like any of those people, because, quite frankly, it was really all over my head.

A jazz guitar player I’ve recently become aware of and was knocked out by is Kurt Rosenwinkel. I heard a bit of a record, and I thought, “Wow, lotta chops.” I didn’t quite get it. Then I went to see him play, and it was some of the most impressive guitar playing, and so musical, so hip, I was blown away.

What sax players in particular influenced your guitar playing?

Certainly Coltrane, and I was very into Wayne Shorter, Roland Kirk, Cannonball Adderley, and I loved Yusef Lateef. Also, Archie Shepp looms large in my pantheon of icons. To call it an influence really had more to do with just the energy of it and the creative abandon I heard in people like that. I liked that these guys embodied both the tradition of jazz at its best, in that they were very sophisticated musicians who could improvise, and yet they wrote their own music. All those guys were composers. The music was relatively simple, and they had this wild, obviously blues-inflected music. It was just the perfect combination. It was something I could get close to. And they all sounded different from each other.

(LEFT) Larry Carlton’s 1957 Les Paul. (RIGHT) 1955 Les Paul gold-top.

The chord substitutions you use when you’re comping, even in a blues context, are much more sophisticated than typical blues players. Is that the jazz knowledge seeping in?

That’s probably from listening to jazz piano and also big bands. The way a big band would play behind a soloist definitely influenced me.

Do you remember a point where you felt like you were able to improvise and felt confident that you had something of your own?

I think the original Yellowjackets band and my first solo album, Inside Story. Before that, there were times when I thought I could play, but the next day I could totally hate my playing. It was sort of manic in that way. Around the time of my first solo album, before it was called the Yellowjackets, I was playing with a group of guys for the first time who were my contemporaries and were all great players and all really clicked. Prior to that, it was the L.A. Express, Joni Mitchell, and all that, and I always felt like I was out of my league with those people – even though it was great being with them. And, of course, with my brothers we had a ball. We had a lot of fun making music together, but it was still very formative; at the time, we were trying all kinds of different stuff.

How long were you in Miles Davis’s band?

I was with Miles for five and a half months. I left largely because it was no longer fun. His management didn’t treat the band well, and Miles really stayed out of that side of things. And the band itself was not like a close-knit group of people; everyone kind of went his own way. Miles started wanting the music to sound more and more like the Tutu record, and he started taking out more of the improvisation, so it wasn’t a place I wanted to be any longer. And my Talk To Your Daughter record was due to be made, and I was looking forward to getting out on my own. I would love to have played with him more, but it would have had to been a different time with a different group. That just wasn’t a great band.

You’ve said that of all the musical experiences you’ve had, the most fulfilling was playing with Joni Mitchell.

Yes. I was playing with musicians who were far more accomplished than I. People like Roger Kellaway, Tom Scott, and John Guerin were real musicians, in my mind, and I was still working at it. And I learned so much, and I was exposed to so much music that I perhaps would never have even gotten to. Also, I was accepted and befriended by these guys as though I belonged there. So that was confidence-building, to be accepted by these great musicians I admired so much. And, of course, Joan – who was really at the height of her career, with Court And Spark. That was the stellar moment. And she was beautiful, an incredible artist, and it was just the greatest learning experience. I learned more in that two-year period than at any other time in my life. It was the most fruitful, in terms of musical experience and broadening my world. It was a big jump from what I’d been doing prior to that – all due respect.

You called yourself a purist, referring to a period not long before that. Were you open-minded going into that gig?

Well, I wasn’t in any way hip to her music. I didn’t really listen to fusion music, but there were a few things that I liked. I was still listening to Miles Davis’ music and Weather Report and John McLaughlin. When I first heard the L.A. Express’ music, I didn’t like it. But after joining the band, these guys were just so good it transcended the context of their music. And that first L.A. Express record, which we were playing live, it’s not very good music. In truth, it was after I joined the band that it really started to open up. Then I was on the next one, Tom Cat, which is actually a lot more colorful. It’s funkier.

What was it like working with George Harrison?

He was always very kind to me. He even came to my wedding – actually uninvited [laughs]! He just showed up. And when they took a picture of the wedding cake, he stuck his finger in it – stuff like that. He was very playful.

One night while we were out on the road, he invited me to his hotel room, just to kind of hang out a little bit. It was just the two of us, and I played him a song that I’d written, and he played “Be Here Now.” It was when I was really first impressed by his guitar playing. There was really a strong feel. When he played it had command in it, which was not something that I ever really necessarily noticed. It was like, “Wow, this is a real guitar player here.” A lot of people might find that strange for me to say, but I was so into blues players and jazz, I kind of wasn’t aware of him as a guitar player. It gave me an even higher regard for him as a musician.

And his slide playing was really unique. He kind of developed his own thing completely. Very melodic.

Besides that natural talent we talked about, did you go through a period of working at it for hours a day?

Practicing I never did much, in a literal way; I never had a method of any kind. I just played the guitar. After the first L.A. Express tour, I set up shop in a little studio in my house and started practicing back-and-forth picking technique and learning new scales – like melodic minor, whole-tone, diminished, harmonic minor – and I had not done that prior to working with Joan and all that. I really worked at that for about six months, and I was also kind of always writing songs.

I’ve been writing songs since I was 17, in one form or another, and I always liked the idea of playing my own music. So I was always pushing myself somehow. I’d push myself into awkward situations – like write music that I couldn’t play, and just play it however best I could. For me, one of the things I like to say, which is completely true, is that I got my fingers going and just played and played as much as I could, then over the years took out all the wrong notes [laughs]. My ear is what developed. That’s the real key. Music has to exist beyond your fingertips and beyond the fingerboard; it has to be a real internal experience. There’s that quality of just developing your musicality through a variety of experiences that you may or may not be prepared for. And I was willing to go ahead and step out on a limb.

Early-’80s Dumble Overdrive Special

Even though you’ve always been identifiable, there have been changes is your style and even technique. Early on, for instance, Albert Collins’ influence wasn’t very apparent in your playing.

Right. I didn’t hear him until I was out of high school, but his playing didn’t become an influence until later. With Spoon, for instance, I was still listening to saxophone players, trying to play like a tenor player.

But then he does enter your vocabulary. On “Mystic Mile” you’re obviously popping with your fingers, a la Albert Collins.

Sure. I remember seeking out a recording of “Frosty” in the early ’80s, and I got The Cool Sounds Of Albert Collins and just fell in love with it. That influence really kind of hit me then.

Why did you decide to form a trio with the Blue Line?

When I first toured behind Talk To Your Daughter, it was a quintet – drums, bass, keyboards, tenor saxophone, and me. Then I was offered a tour, but the money was so bad the only way we could afford to do it was as a trio. And I’d never done that in my life. I was truly nervous about it. We did almost two weeks like that, and the last show we played was at the Lone Star Saloon in New York City, and after the show I walked up to Tom and said, “Well, we got a band.” He laughed, and went, “Yeah, man” – because we loved it. Of course, it meant that we could make a little more money, too. But it wasn’t a drag; we felt like, “Wow, we can do this as a trio and have a ball!” That was the beginning of a very nice time. The Blue Line as a trio, the first couple of years, were really good times. Again, it was that feeling that you’re playing with a group of your peers; you enjoy each other; you’re all on the same track; and you go out and play your asses off. It’s hard to find that kind of synchronicity.

Eric Clapton was talking about the Cream reunion, and he said that trying to fill every space might be a false assumption, that there are people who can “leave air.”

That’s so true. I tried very hard to allow the space. I made a real effort at that. You can just have the drummer there – by himself – and people can have a satisfying musical experience, at least for a while. Of course, there were many times I felt that I had to play a lot or else it wasn’t going to be happening. But the times when it was best were when I practiced what I preached and actually relaxed into the space. The thing is, everybody has to do it, too. Even if you do it, if the other people don’t do it, then it doesn’t necessarily work.

Let’s run down the succession of guitars you’ve played.

My first real good electric was a Guild Starfire III with a single sharp cutaway. I bought the Gibson L-5 I used with Charlie and the Ford Band just because I wanted a jazz guitar. My mother co-signed a loan for me, and I got it at Sherman & Clay, in San Francisco.

It was brand-spanking new, and it was never a great guitar. Somehow while I was working with Spoon, I kind of figured that out, and I wanted something else. So I went into a shop on Sunset Boulevard and saw this Gibson Super 400 up on the wall. I played it and asked, “What will you give me in trade for this L-5?” He said, “I’ll take the L-5 and 200 bucks.” Okay.

That’s a steal!

I had paid $1,250 for the L-5 in 1970, which was a lot of money then. Of course, the Super 4 was a “used” instrument. There wasn’t really a vintage craze then.

Prior to Spoon, I had a blackface piggyback Fender Bassman with a 2×12 cabinet and no reverb – just the L-5 plugged straight into that amp. With Spoon, I bought a Super Reverb, and used that for at least the second half of the time I was with him, when I switched to the Super 400. I kind of associate the L-5 and the Bassman, and then the Super 400 and Super Reverb was a new combination. I kicked myself for years for selling that Super 400.

When you switched to the Gibson ES-335, was that dictated by…

The music. The Super 400 just made no sense in the context of the L.A. Express and Joni Mitchell’s music. It was Tom Scott who took me down to Guitar Center. He said, “I called Larry Carlton, and he said he uses a 335.” – he didn’t know the name of it. So we went looking for a 335 and bought four little stomp boxes, and went to rehearsal.

You and Larry Carlton have done some recent tours together.

I think we just have a tremendous amount of mutual admiration and respect. He’s a great spirit and a lot of fun. And it’s just great to get your ass kicked. It helps you grow, helps you move forward. We have different strengths, but the things that he’s really good at are awesome. There’s a thing or two that I’m good at that seem to maybe exceed his abilities here and there, but overall he’s got so much to offer as a guitar player it’s ridiculous.

Did the Fender that became the Robben Ford Signature Model come after the 335?

I fooled around with some Yamahas for a short period during the Yellowjackets. They gave me a 335-type guitar and a Twin-style 2×12 amp, but it was solidstate. Then Fender came up with the Esprit Ultra, I think it was called. It was Fender’s attempt at doing something Gibson-like. Dan Smith at Fender called me and said, “What would you like? What kind of guitar would you design, if you could?” I told him I wanted a smaller body, double-cutaway, and I also wanted to be able to get a thinner, brighter sound somehow, compared to what you got out of a 335, which started sounding too dark, to me, with the music of the times. Dan was really responsible for designing that guitar, along with John Carruthers, and my conversations with them.

(LEFT TO RIGHT) 1950s Fender Pro. 1966 Fender Super Reverb. Early-’60s Fender Super Reverb.

What did they do to make it brighter?

Brighter woods, with a spruce top and an ebony fretboard. I think it was Dan’s idea to have a little switch to split the pickups into single-coil. The guitar really made sense for me; it clicked. I only have one today – a much later model.

The guitar was a failure on the market and was discontinued after about six months. I continued to play it, and when Talk To Your Daughter came out, with me pictured on the cover playing it, Fender started getting calls. So Dan called me up and said, “What would think about having this guitar as a custom-shop Robben Ford Signature Model?” Great!

I continued to float back and forth between a Strat and the Robben Ford Model, and the Robben Ford Model evolved from a chambered body into a solidbody with a flame top and rosewood fretboard – basically a Les Paul with a double-cutaway. (Ed. Note: For more information of the evolution of the Robben Ford Signature Model, go to masterseriesguitars.com/timeline.html.)

What do you look for in a Strat?

Everybody was playing Strats in the ’80s, and it was a good recording guitar, a good rhythm guitar. That’s why I even started fooling around with one – more for accompaniment. But I finally sold my ’58 dot-neck 335, and bought a ’58 Strat, tobaccoburst. That’s what I played with Miles Davis and later David Sanborn and my own gigs to some extent. (Ed. Note: While recording his latest CD, moving from one Hollywood studio to another last December, Robben’s Fender Stratocaster went missing in action. Its serial number is 25560. Anyone with information on its whereabouts is urged to contact Vintage Guitar.)

Why do you prefer early-’60s 335s to dot-necks?

With dot-necks, sometimes when they feed back, they kind of choke, as opposed to ringing out. They kind of close down a little bit. The early-’60s models ring clear. I like a bigger neck, and those [early-’60s] guitars don’t necessarily have big necks. I like just a nice, round, medium-sized neck.

I actually just bought another 335. I was looking for an early-’60s model, but they’re just too damned expensive. I got a ’68, which is something I never would have even looked at in the past, but it’s got the old wood, and there’s enough neck there where I can set it up so it will be comfortable for me to play. The pickups are actually pretty decent, and it just might work. I’m hopeful.

But the Tele has also become very important. It’s a 1960. I’m not very familiar with the world of the Tele – this is the only one I’ve ever owned. I think I probably picked it up because it’s the same model that Bloomfield played on the first Butterfield Blues Band record. Once I checked it out, I had to buy it, and it’s become big for me. I got it when I was with the Blue Line and used it for the first time on the Mystic Mile record.

And you’ve got a couple of Les Pauls.

I have a ’55 that I’ve used a bit, like on “In The Beginning” and “I Can’t Stand The Rain” [Tiger Walk]. The variety of tones that come out of that guitar on that song is amazing. Really colorful instrument. I also have a ’57 goldtop that Larry Carlton gave me on long-term loan. It’s an amazing guitar.

Other than the Robben Ford model, everything you’re talking about is vintage. There are some great contemporary builders and great reissues. Have you tried many of them?

Not really. I sat in with Gov’t Mule in Santa Barbara about nine months ago, and for whatever reason I didn’t have a guitar [laughs]. I think I popped a string or something, so I used one of Warren Haynes’ guitars – a blond, vintage-style 335. And I really liked it. But old wood just has something that I don’t think you’ll find elsewhere.

What’s the custom-made guitar shown on your website?

It’s a Sakashta. Taku Sakashta made some guitars for me that I fooled with, but they never quite clicked. But this particular guitar I’m playing all the time now. It has small chambers in the body. I basically used the Sakashta and Larry’s goldtop, and my Tele on the new CD.

I also have a ’63 355, but a 335 has a bigger tone. It’s a better-sounding guitar. A 355 is very specific and has that honky, midrangey thing. Because it’s got all that hardware and machinery in it, the guitar isn’t able to resonate like a 335 – at least that’s what I would say.

I fell in love with the 355 just visually, when I was 12 years old, and I always wanted one. I finally got one, but the only place I was ever able to use it was when I was out with Phil Lesh. To me, the 355 is the most beautiful-looking electric guitar ever made.

It seems odd that you’d own a Fender Duo-Sonic.

There were times when I felt like having something kind of small would make it easier to play in a certain way, particularly in a jazz context. Also, John McLaughlin used one of those guitars on [Miles Davis’] In A Silent Way and when he was with Tony Williams Lifetime. And they have wonderful pickups in them; they sound really good. But ultimately, the bridge leaves a lot to be desired, and makes the guitar pretty unplayable.

Why do you like Dumble amplifiers?

The tone curve is so perfect. The lows are low, but don’t get woofy and mushed out; midrange is punchy and very strong; and the high-end is clear and high but not ear-piercing. All the frequencies somehow are just so righteous and very even.

The first Overdrive Special I bought in about 1983, and the other one I had built around ’93 or ’94.

I’ve used Celestion 65s as my first choice for many years, but I’ve experimented with the 70s and 75s, and also Eminence was sending me speakers that I used off and on.

You prefer Super Reverbs to Twins?

Twins are too dark-sounding. The first Super Reverb I got a long time ago is an early-’60s. I got the second one pretty recently; it’s a ’66. The new one sounds great, and hasn’t been modified at all. The other one has been Dumble-ized a bit – not a lot. As Alexander [Dumble] said, he just kind of tightened up the low-end.

What does the rest of your rig consist of?

I have an Ernie Ball volume pedal, a Jim Dunlop wah-wah, and a TC Electronics 2290 delay – which has other effects, too, but I never use them. And the Dumble has an overdrive station in it, so that’s my overdrive. Then there’s the downsized rig, which for me would be the Super Reverb, a Zen drive pedal, wah, and volume pedal. I also use Planet Wave cable, but I reverse them. I plug them in the opposite way they say to use them. I like the way it sounds better. I use D’Addario strings, .010 through .046, and D’Addario heavy-gauge picks, like a standard Fender heavy.

Musicians talk about “The Zone” in the same way a basketball player will have a hot hand one night – where everything clicks. You must be familiar with that syndrome.

For me, if I’ve got my sound, I’m gonna be good. I’m going to be able to play; I’m going to feel comfortable; I’m going to be ready for anything and happy to be there. As long as I’ve got my sound, for me, it’s not a special space; it’s exactly the space where we should be. I’m shocked at a lot of people who say, “Oh, I just couldn’t play tonight.” I think, “Well, why not?” I actually don’t understand that kind of mentality. I don’t mean to blow my own horn here, but I’ve been playing for 40-some years; what’s going to stop me from being able to make some music? The only thing is the sound.

There’s something very earthy about the whole process of making music, to me, even though it has a strong spiritual element. It’s more of an emotional element – a very human realm that I appreciate so much. That’s one of the beautiful things about making music to me: I do have my feet on the ground, and I’m actually doing something with other people, and we’re sharing this thing. That’s what turns me on.

What about nights when you can’t get your sound? Can you put it out of your mind and still play well?

No, you’re just kind of screwed. You’re screwed for the night, man [laughs]!

© 2007 Dan Forte; all rights reserved.

This article originally appeared in VG August 2009 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

That night, Winter played B.B. King’s “It’s My Own Fault” and blew away the audience. Reps from Columbia were in attendance, and Winter was signed to the biggest advance in the history of the recording industry.

His wicked slide playing and Texas sizzle influenced a generation of guitarists and made him arguably the best white blues guitarist of his generation. His devotion to the blues led him to produce his childhood idol Muddy Waters. The result was the best selling albums Hard Again, I’m Ready, and King Bee, the financial high point of Waters’ career.

Despite his success, Winter wrestled with drug and alcohol addiction and unscrupulous management. For years, he lived in a fog of drugs and deceit, and paid dearly for it. While working on his Grammy-nominated I’m A Bluesman album, he met guitarist Paul Nelson, who contributed material to the album and played guitar. Nelson then became Winter’s touring guitarist and, eventually, his manager. Nelson has recorded and performed with some of the biggest names in the music industry ,and brings a wealth of savvy to the table. He is responsible for redirecting Winter’s career, but more importantly, he was successful in helping Winter kick a 40-year dependence on methadone. We recently spoke with both of them.

Johnny, how are you feeling?

Johnny Winter: Good. I quit drinking, quit taking drugs.

How hard was that?

JW: It wasn’t hard at all because Paul didn’t tell me he was doing it (laughs!)

Paul Nelson: I was shaving off his methadone. I knew it had to go.

JW: I’d never done it if I’d known. I was terrified of stopping.

PN: I saw it taking its toll and I knew how headstrong he was. I knew if his mind knew what was going on, he would refuse it.

JW: I didn’t think I could stop. I didn’t think there was any possible way.

PN: His addiction to music was stronger than any drug. The music got him out of it. He’s communicating again with people, which he wasn’t doing through the ’90s when he was on all that stuff. His addiction to music has made him the greatest guitar player, and made him see that if anything messes with his music, he’ll stop it.

JW: He’s never made one mistake the whole time he’s been managing me.

Do you have arguments?

JW: All the time (laughs)!

PN: Yeah, because you’re human, you have input, there’s emotion. Methadone turns you into cream corn. It wasn’t just me taking him off the methadone. He got off drinking and stopped smoking cigarettes.

JW: I didn’t know how much it was hurting me until I got off of it.

Tell us about the new record?

JW: It’s called Roots. It’s all old stuff that I grew up loving that influenced me when I was first starting to play. We’re doing “Maybellene” by Chuck Berry, “Come Back Baby” by Ray Charles, “Further On Up The Road” by Bobby Blue Bland, “T-Bone Shuffle” by T-Bone Walker…

Paul, what’s the biggest impact he’s had on your playing?

PN: Having him tell me what to go back and listen to, to perfect my playing. Figuring out what made him tick made me tick; like the “Okie Dokie Stomp.” In his time, if you didn’t know that song, you were nothing.

Johnny, who do you listen to, to stay on top of your game?

JW: Muddy was a big influence – the best blues guy that’s ever been. He put so much emotion into it.

What kind of gear are you using?

JW: An old Music Man combo amp with four 10s, a ’64 Gibson Firebird for slide, my Lazer, and a Boss Chorus pedal. That amp is loud as hell! I’ve had it since the ’70s. When I was playing with Muddy, Bob Margolin had one. I tried his and loved it, so I got one. This is around ’77 or ’78. I set it up all treble, no middle, and no bass. I turn it all the way up.

What kind of slide do you use?

JW: My original was made out of a cymbal stand. Dunlop reproduced it and put out what they call The Texas Slider.

You’ve been doing this a long time. What keeps you inspired and motivated?

JW: I love playing for people. I like playing for people more than I do recording. I like getting that energy back from people. If you don’t get it, you don’t play as good. – Oscar Jordan

This article originally appeared in VG September 2011 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.