After the Clash, Saint Joe Strummer (to borrow the beatification endowed by The Hold Steady) spent some years in the wilderness. His first full solo album, 1989’s Earthquake Weather, didn’t sell well despite being a fine (if undersung) work. It was 10 more years of searching before he struck it right with the Mescaleros. The years from 1999 to his death in 2002 were intensely creative, resulting in three stellar studio albums and posthumous Streetcore.
Following the greatest-hits set Joe Strummer 001, 002 collects the Mescaleros albums in remastered form on vinyl and CD, with 15 unreleased tracks spanning the first demos Strummer wrote for the band, and outtakes of several final recordings. There’s a live “London Is Burning,” plus sizzling outtakes of “Coma Girl” and “Get Down Moses,” as well as “Ocean Of Dreams” featuring Sex Pistols’ guitarist Steve Jones.
The songs range from rockabilly to punk to a dance/hip hop vibe, similar to Jones’ Big Audio Dynamite, yet with more bite, and Strummer rages throughout. His Telecaster work – along with Mescaleros Antony Glenn and Scott Shields – roars with a vision as stark and political as his Clash music.
This article originally appeared in VG’s December 2022 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
By the mid ’70s, rock and roll had matured into a big business, with top acts including Led Zeppelin, The Who, and Rolling Stones earning millions of dollars on record sales and tours.
Following a spectacular four-album run starting with Beggars Banquet and ending with Exile on Main Street, The Stones sputtered after releasing two less-well-received studio records, Goat’s Head Soup and It’s Only Rock and Roll. Critics suddenly pondered their relevance.
In late 1974, that air of uncertainty was compounded by the departure of Mick Taylor, their virtuoso lead guitarist whose tasteful playing added a level of musicality and elegance for the prior five years.
Intrepid as ever, the Stones moved forward with plans to record what would be their 15th American album despite lacking a second guitarist – a key element of their sound. As word spread of Taylor’s departure, several candidates for the lead-guitar slot were invited to jam with the band in Rotterdam, including Steve Marriott, Jeff Beck, Rory Gallagher, and a cast of other top players. By the time recording commenced at Musicland Studios, in Munich, only three would make it onto the final tracks: British guitarist Ronnie Wood of the Faces along with Americans Harvey Mandel of Canned Heat and Wayne Perkins, the lead guitarist at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, in Alabama, where he’d recorded with Bob Marley, Joni Mitchell, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and a host of others.
“Eric Clapton and I had recently hit it off and he’d invited me down to Jamaica,” recalled Perkins, who at the time had just wrapped a world tour with Leon Russell. “One morning, we were kicking around over breakfast when he said, ‘Taylor’s just quit the Stones and they’re looking for another guitarist.’ So I said, ‘Put in a phone call for me, will ya?’ and he did. He called Mick Jagger on the spot and recommended me, as Leon Russell would soon do. Shortly after I returned home to Birmingham, I got a call from The Stones, and they invited me to join them at Musicland Studios. To get to know them first, I flew to London and moved in with Keith, who was living in Ronnie Wood’s house, called The Wick. Keith and I clicked, and he made me feel right at home. We hung out all the time and started playing and writing, and then Mick showed up, but he didn’t want to see us writing together (laughs).”
Engineered by Glyn Johns and Keith Harwood, Black and Blue is one of the best-sounding albums in the Stones catalog.
In early ’75, the group set up shop in Munich with Perkins as lead man. The goal was to have an album ready for a summer tour of the Americas, which started in June. According to Perkins, though he and Richards hit it off, Jagger still wanted to bring in other guitarists. Soon, Mandel and Ron Wood were in the picture.
“Harvey and I knew each other, and one day he said, ‘I think they like both of us. What are they going to do?’”
Both wondered if the band would even select an American, even given Mandel’s great wah guitar on “Hot Stuff,” and Perkins’ brilliant contributions to three of the album’s best songs, “Fool to Cry,” “Memory Motel,” and the explosive “Hand of Fate” (another Perkins-led tune, “Worried ’Bout You,” would appear five years later on Tattoo You). Long a fan favorite, “Hand of Fate” features some of the most-tasteful lead guitar playing to ever grace a Stones song.
“I was playing my Les Paul, a black two-pickup ’68 Custom, through a Morley Boost pedal and into a Twin Reverb. Keith was playing his Tele in open G through one of the many Ampeg combos they had, and we recorded ‘Hand of Fate’ live, all standing in the same room. I came up with this guitar line, and Keith said, ‘Yeah, keep doing that,’ and it worked out pretty cool. Keith told me he really liked my parts.”
Wayne Perkins in the ’80s with his plaque commemorating Black and Blue‘s status as a gold album.
In fact, one day in Munich, Perkins was hanging with Richards as the Stone was being interviewed by a British journalist. When asked if the band had selected a guitarist, Keith reportedly said, “Well, we don’t know yet, but my favorite is right here in the room with us.”
Though the album progressed, it became clear that the band would not finish before the tour, and the group decided to ask Ronnie Wood, who was still part of the Faces, to round out the band for the live shows.
In December of ’75, the group returned to Munich, with Wood taking a more active role, his band, The Faces, having disbanded the prior month. By April, Black and Blue was released, containing eight new tracks, seven of them originals. At the same time, Wood was formally named the new guitarist. Within a few weeks, the first single, “Fool to Cry,” shot up the American charts into the Top 10, and the album soon held the #1 position.
Stylistically, like much of the Stones’ music, Black and Blue is heavily influenced by roots music, in this case, rock and roll, reggae, funk, soul, and even disco. Aided and abetted by Billy Preston and Nicky Hopkins, it is simultaneously a very melodic, yet groove-heavy, record. The seven-minute “Memory Motel” is a fan favorite that appears on setlists to this day. Heavily influenced by Wood, “Hey Negrita” is a classic example of the two-guitar interplay Richards calls “the ancient art of weaving,” with the former’s funky riff snaking in and out of the latter’s power chords. Another example is “Crazy Mama,” which also demonstrates Jagger’s chops on electric guitar. “Hand of Fate” stands as a high point, showcasing Perkins’ fluid lead lines, and recalling what Stones fans especially loved about Mick Taylor.
This article originally appeared in VG’s December 2022 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
This month we feature Steve Lukather, Dominic Miller, Steve Khan, Sam Kiszka, Selwyn Birchwood, Dave Davies, Brennen Leigh, and much more!
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Don’t miss Vintage Guitar magazine’s monthly playlist on the music-streaming service Spotify. Each month, Karl Markgraf curates a playlist featuring artists and songs mentioned in the pages of VG, arranged in order to play along as you read the issue, or just enjoy on its own! Karl holds a bachelor’s degree in Jazz Guitar from the University of Northern Colorado and works as a performing and recording artist, producer, and educator in New York.
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Like Dylan, the three founding members of the Byrds were ’60s acoustic folkies who, inspired by Beatlemania and the British Invasion, defined the amplified genre dubbed folk-rock.
This lavish, chronological account of McGuinn, Crosby, and Hillman explores three pivotal years through a blend of posed and candid photos (most never seen) combined with new commentary from all three, most of it witty and wistful, occasionally sardonic and bitter.
Guitar insights abound. The Beatles and A Hard Day’s Night led McGuinn to his now-iconic blond Rick 12-string, Crosby to his Gretsch Country Gentleman. Hillman, who’d never played bass, felt Höfner’s 500/1 violin bass packed less punch and opted for a Fender Precision. Crosby discusses using a dropped-D tuning on “Turn! Turn! Turn!” Shots of their primitive mid-’60s stage setups might stun young musicians, but as Hillman notes, “We didn’t have monitors onstage for a long time.”
While the narrative covers Crosby’s acrimonious 1967 firing, things don’t conclude on a down note. Session photos from 1972 (for their ’73 reunion LP) and 1991 Rock Hall of Fame induction finish things off. While other authoritative Byrds histories have appeared over the decades, none are quite like this.
This article originally appeared in VG’s December 2022 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
In the highly recommended documentary, 2020’s The Go-Go’s, Police drummer Stewart Copeland is incredulous to learn that the band had yet to be inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “What the f**k? They’re not?” Well, not until the following year.
On March 6, 1982, the Go-Go’s became the first self-contained, all-female band to top the Billboard album chart – and it’s still the only such group to do so. The years since saw them ensconced on the Walk Of Fame and the Great White Way. What would seem a no-brainer induction was not a slam dunk, with chauvinism perhaps playing a part. How else can you explain articles using adjectives like “bubbly” and “chirpy” that are never applied to male bands?
In 2020, bassist Kathy Valentine published All I Ever Wanted – A Rock ’N’ Roll Memoir, named after the hit “Vacation,” which she co-wrote.
“I felt I had a compelling story to tell,” she says. “There were not a lot of female musicians who had a level of success who’d written about it. It’s more like, ‘Oh, women who rock, women who are fierce.’ You don’t hear about the passion for music that makes most women want to do it.”
The upbeat pop masters Go-Go’s are revealed to be booze-swilling, drug-taking, sex-driven young women – not unusual considering the time and circumstance. Valentine’s earlier years included scant-discipline upbringing via a free-spirited mom, a teen rape and abortion, and her punk band, the Violators. Later, there’s the betrayal of two Go-Go’s telling the others the band was no more, a terrifying break-in, and eventual sobriety. A recurring theme is that no one but a Go-Go can know what it’s like, but Valentine offers the reader a VIP laminate.
Due to the pandemic, in-store appearances were either Zoomed or cancelled, but the book garnered excellent reviews.
“I had no illlusions that I’m the most high-profile member of the group,” she allows. “The Go-Go’s are a band that has a valid claim to a place in history, but we have not been at the forefront of anything for decades. You’re talking about a band that had its heyday in the ’80s, and you’re talking about the bass player. I co-wrote a couple of our hits, but I was not the person in the spotlight. I knew that nobody’s going to care that the bass player from the Go-Go’s has a book, so it had to be very real, honest, and authentic. I had to tell a very human story.”
For example, regarding the incident when a robber broke into her L.A. home and tied up her and two friends: “I wanted the way things felt to be on the page. The only way I could do that was to get in that space. When I wrote that part, I was remembering very vividly what the fear and panic and confusion and desperation to live and survive felt like.”
Growing up in Austin, Valentine was into the Stones, ZZ Top, and the Faces, along with the punk rock of Blondie, the Ramones, Sex Pistols, and Buzzcocks, but also Jerry Jeff Walker, Willie Nelson, Doug Sahm, and the Vaughan brothers. On a fortuitous trip visiting family in England in ’73, a bass-wielding Suzi Quatro blasted “Can The Can” on “Top Of The Pops,” and it changed 14-year-old Kathy’s life.
Though she took up guitar, she was up for the challenge when the Go-Go’s later needed a bassist. “It wasn’t hard for me to figure out what a song needed. Some songs want to swing, some want to drive, some want to groove. If you have a lot of exposure and a grasp of music, like I did, it was just a matter of judgment and style. I had a lot of music to bring to the band, whereas another bass player might not be coming from that breadth of knowledge. One would think the bass is a limited place to put that, but I think I did a really good job of putting all of my style and knowledge and ability into that instrument, and it had a lot to do with the sound of the band.”
Part of that sound was Valentine’s tightness with drummer Gina Schock, who Kathy describes as “very solid, great time, great energy, and she did not make mistakes.”
Valentine’s axes evolved from a Mustang Bass to Precisions with Jazz Bass necks and a silver-sparkle bass that Billy Gibbons designed for her, built by John Bolin. The proud owner of a Flying V that was a gift from Lenny Kravitz, she states, “I can’t play a gig without a Strat. I don’t want all this crap, all these amps and guitars. But every time I sell one, I miss it.”
The memoir’s narrative ends at 1990; since then, the Go-Go’s have sporadically reunited, and Valentine released the solo album Light Years. In August, the 63-year-old returned to the Rock Hall to give a concert with her current band, the Bluebonnets.
This article originally appeared in VG’s December 2022 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Travelin’ band: CCR onstage in April 1970 at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
Stop the presses! New CCR is big news, and for one big reason – rarity. Beyond the band’s seven studio albums from 1968 to ’72, and three previous live albums, there’s nothing else – no never-before-released tunes, no outtakes, no alts. And there probably never will be, so this new live album is big stuff. Or is it?
Thing is, Creedence played its songs live with little variation; John Fogerty wrote and arranged the songs, taught his band what to play, and the tunes were largely cast in stone. So the opener from this 1970 concert – “Born On The Bayou” – sounds almost identical to the track on Bayou Country. That’s not to say it isn’t an inspired, energetic show – it is – and that they don’t cover many of their greatest songs – they do.
Creedence fans will likely want this set, but the accompanying documentary film may be even more interesting. Travelin’ Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival At The Royal Albert Hall is chock full of new material including great footage of the quartet traveling Europe and playing. And it’s narrated by that notable CCR fan, The Dude, actor Jeff Bridges.
This article originally appeared in VG’s December 2022 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
The 1970s is often called “the Copy Era” for the dominating presence and spectacular success of Japanese “copies” of popular American guitars, most notably of the Gibson Les Paul. Indeed, it was with these “copies” that many Japanese manufacturers honed their chops and became world-class guitar makers. In fact, it was a lawsuit filed by Norlin (Gibson) against Elger (Ibanez) over trademark infringement (headstock copying) in Philadelphia in the summer of 1977 that gave us the now-ubiquitous term “lawsuit guitar.” But when you look a little closer, Japanese guitars from this period were about way more than copying. Many were quite whimsical and some very innovative. One of the former can be seen in this circa 1975 Penco Model A-15-JD.
Basically, this Penco is a “copy” of a Gibson J-200 or Super Jumbo, a giant of a guitar burned into our minds with twin pickguards in the hands of the Everly Brothers or dwarfing the golden-throated Emmy Lou Harris. Introduced in 1937-’38, the Super Jumbo was the culmination of what might be called guitar “size wars.” In the mid 19th century, when American guitar making began, guitars were typically about 10″ wide at the lower bout. As the guitar became more popular, its girth gradually expanded. By the end of the century, a “standard” guitar was around 12″ wide and auditorium guitars could reach 14″ wide. Right around World War II, Washburn introduced a jumbo guitar with a 16″ lower bout, followed by the first Martin dreadnoughts made for Boston’s Ditson (1916). Guitars continued to escalate. Gibson’s jumbo topped that in the late ’30s and eventually settled in at 17″. It was this hefty flat-top that was given the flattery of imitation in this magnificent Penco guitar.
Penco was one of those regional brand names that proliferated in the ’70s. Back then, America had not yet been franchised by national-chain music stores. Instead, regions were served by large local distributors that often owned regional chains, but also served mom-and-pop music stores in the area. It was not uncommon for these distributors to have their own “house brands,” as they’ve become known, a proprietary brand name put on guitars supplied by the company building them. Through the ’60s, these were likely to have come from the Harmony, Kay, or Valco factories. As Japanese imports began to flood the market in the late ’60s, American manufacturers began to suffer. In ’68, Valco-Kay, which had merged the year before, went belly up, opening the field to the Japanese (European guitars had largely gotten too expensive by then).
1975 Penco Model A-15-JD
The Penco name was employed by Philadelphia Music Company, of Limerick, Pennsylvania, a sleepy rural town northwest of Philly best known as the location of a nuclear power plant. Run by the brothers Fred and Ralph Baas, Philadelphia Music had a number of stores throughout the area. However, it is best remembered as the importer of Framus guitars from Germany, which it distributed nationally. As part of this relationship with Framus, Philadelphia Music was responsible for launching the careers of luthiers Sam Koontz and Eric Schulte as well as the American presence of Bill Lawrence, a.k.a. Billy Lorento.
Framus, like most other European guitars (except for Hagstrom), had ceased to be much of a player in the U.S. by the 1970s. Philadelphia Music replaced Framus with Japanese-made Pencos as its budget brand. Because it was largely a regional brand, Pencos are not especially plentiful and, not surprisingly, usually show up in the Philly area. Typically they are the same as other regional brands, such as Bradley, made for Kope Venemann of KAPA guitars in Maryland and sold in Baltimore/Washington D.C. Most were of decent quality, like the Model A-15-JD.
As with most Japanese acoustic guitars from the ’70s, this guitar has laminated woods. Guitarists generally prefer solid timbers, but laminated shouldn’t be equated with the cheap “plywood” you get at Home Depot. Lamination is typically two or three plies that create a strong, stable component, allow the builder to use a fancy outer veneer, and still sell at a budget price. This has a laminated spruce top with a nice, booming sound. As is often the case with laminated tops, the sound is good but sustain suffers, which is only a problem if your style demands sustain.
Interestingly, the sides of this guitar are also laminated spruce, a very unusual design. The back is faced with flamed maple with a nice color marquetry strip down the middle seam. The glued-in neck is three pieces of maple glued at cross grain for stability, with a rosewood fingerboard and real pearl inlays. As you can see, everything is bound. The hardware is typical ’70s Japanese, but if you were going to play this, you’d change the tuners.
As you would expect, this has the Gibson-style mustache bridge, but the similarities begin to diverge there. Beyond the spruce sides, the most distinct departure here is the tooled leather pickguard and arm-rest. Way cool! How much this does to enhance the sound is unclear, but put on a rawhide jacket with fringes on the sleeves and you’re ready to play a country-rock hoedown!
It’s a pretty safe bet this is from 1975. It has two numbers inside, 1407Z and 750401, and the latter looks to be date encoded. Japanese guitar makers began using serial numbers right around this time. Plus this has the Gibson-style headstock. By 1976, with rumors of a pending lawsuit flying throughout the guitar-importing community, headstocks began to change to more original designs, although acoustics tended to lag electrics in this changeover. By ’78, almost all “copies” were gone and even acoustics were emphasizing features such as brass fittings, which distinguished them from popular American designs.
In any case, this natty Penco is a fine example of a “copy” that pushed the envelope, marking a special point in time in American – and Japanese – guitar history! And it’s pretty cool, to boot!
This article originally appeared in VG‘s December 2009 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
The Fishman Loudbox Mini is just what its name says – a small amp that delivers the company’s renowned audio in a loud, portable, non-hernia-inducing package.
Weighing just 21 pounds, the two-channel Mini packs 60 watts, one channel with a 1/4″ jack for guitar, the other an XLR jack for microphone or preamp. There’s also a three-band EQ and digital reverb on both, a Phase button for pumping-up bass at low volume (or tweaking feedback), Aux In jacks, and Bluetooth connectivity for adding backing tracks. For extra ear candy, the Chorus circuit offers two presets of lushness.
Once upon a time, a smaller acoustic amp might distort if you cranked it too high, but Fishman’s designers made the Loudbox Mini a durable performer. There is a 6.5″ woofer and 1″ tweeter, yet even at high volume the speakers deliver big, impressively clean tone. And if you think a smaller amp can’t deliver adequate bass, consider that many of today’s acoustic/electric guitars have their own active EQ, so adding more low-end is easy.
It’s hard to argue with the Loudbox Mini. It sounds sumptuous, offers tons of features, and can make your load-out a breeze. Top it with an easy-on-the-debit-card price – and you’re ready for your next coffeehouse or farmer’s market gig.
This article originally appeared in VG’s December 2022 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Southern-fried rock from California? You bet it’s tasty. Check out the guitar work of Henry James Schneekluth riffing on the title track from the band’s latest EP, “One Of A Kind.” That’s his ’62 ebony-block Gibson SG and you’re hearing it through a ’61 National Dynamic 20 amp. Catch our review in the July issue. Read Now!
In the multi-verse of effects pedals, Robert Keeley’s compressors, dirt boxes, and workstation gizmos are a thing of beauty – particularly in the realm of pedals that provide multiple sounds. Guitarists who have a hankering for fuzz, delay, and modulation effects will undoubtedly dig the Dark Side, which purports to mimic the popular guitar sounds of David Gilmour of Pink Floyd.
Based on a 1977 op-amp style analog fuzz, the Dark Side uses a high-quality 24-bit DSP engine to mirror the Big Muff circuit with the capacity for variations using Level, Filter, and Fuzz knobs for volume, tone control, and gain, respectively. A three-position equalization voicing switch (Flat, Full, Scoop) offers more control. The delay and modulation effects feature 12 Binson-style syncopated delays and four modulation sounds – flanger, rotary, phaser, and univibe. Level, Blend, Depth, and Rate knobs offer more sonic flexibility. The delay cannot be used with the modulation effects, but a button on top allows rearranging the order of effects.
The Dark Side packs malleable features in a small package; modulation effects are rich and lustrous, and the acquired taste of fuzz achieves usable sustain, boost, and saturated grit. The delay is warm and flexible, but lacks tap tempo.
In all, Keeley has created a super-cool musical product, invaluable for getting the most from a single enclosure.
This article originally appeared in VG’s December 2022 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Don’t miss Vintage Guitar magazine’s monthly playlist on the music-streaming service Spotify. Each month, 
Have Guitar Will Travel, hosted by James Patrick Regan, otherwise known as Jimmy from the Deadlies, is presented by Vintage Guitar magazine, the destination for guitar enthusiasts. Podcast episodes feature guitar players, builders, dealers, and more – all with great experiences to share! Find all podcasts at 
