Guitarist

Guitarist is the longest established UK guitar magazine. You'll find authoritative gear reviews, artist interviews, technique lessons and advice. Plus, Guitarist's digital edition now includes all of the same audio and video content as the print edition; available to download from a special area of the Guitarist website!

A Year In Guitar

Guitarist

JOHN FRUSCIANTE • The Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist spills the beans about his love of Eddie Van Halen and his attraction to clean tones, with a first-hand dive into seven guitars behind the group’s hits. John Frusciante’s tech, Henry Trejo, and former tech, Dave Lee, fill in the details

SAMANTHA FISH • Death Wish Blues is a brand-new collaborative album from Samantha Fish and Jesse Dayton and will see the pair touring the UK in autumn 2023. We invited Samantha to our studios to hear the story behind the release

IN THE NAME OF LOVE • When it came to remaking 40 classic U2 tracks for Songs Of Surrender, The Edge was guided by his heart and one grand idea – “to make intimacy the new version of punk rock”

DARK GREEN • Metallica’s new album, 72 Seasons, is as brutal as any the behemoth metal band has made to date. But listen closer and you might pick out a richly familiar voice among the guitar tones. We join Kirk Hammett to hear how Peter Green’s famous ‘Greeny’ ’59 Les Paul, and the new USA reissues of the guitar, have changed his viewpoint on high-gain playing since the guitar has been in his care. We also learn Kirk’s candid views on the “end of the age of active pickups”, as well as the apparent disclosure of an Epiphone replica of Greeny in the pipeline…

BERNIE MARSDEN 1951 – 2023 • The Whitesnake co-founder and lifelong bluesman left us on 24 August. Guitarist remembers an all-time-great player, writer, collaborator, collector, mentor and friend

LIFE OF A PIONEER • From the rebellious square peg of Swinging London to the still-questing elder statesman of the post-millennium, Jeff Beck reimagined the electric guitar as a magic wand in a career that could be both spellbinding and maddening

CHANGING LANES • AS HE DROPS THIRD SOLO ALBUM, ‘LOST AT SEA’, IN THE BREATH BETWEEN FOO FIGHTERS DUTIES, CHRIS SHIFLETT TELLS US ABOUT BREAKING BAD HABITS, THE “BLASPHEMY” OF HIS NEW BACKLINE, KEEPING THE DEVIL AT BAY, AND THE PERILS OF THE PROVINCIAL CLUB CIRCUIT

MOONSHINE • Pink Floyd’s masterwork, The Dark Side Of The Moon, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Although it remains one of the greatest studio albums of all time, Floyd’s opus began life as a live performance and it went on to be toured twice in Floyd’s career: once in the early to mid-1970s and again in 1994. In this special edition, we examine why the 20-year-evolution of Dark Side as a hypnotically powerful live performance was a longer and even more fascinating journey than the creation of the album itself. We also find out how the journey to The Dark Side Of The Moon shaped David Gilmour’s gear choices as he strove for the signature tone we know so well today, 50 years on

Messin' WITH THE RIG • Three decades since his death, Rory Gallagher remains the ultimate road warrior. As we rebuild the exact rigs from the late Irishman’s most famous live periods, using historic gear loaned by his estate, Daniel Gallagher looks back over his uncle’s lifetime on the boards

THE MUSIC OF TIME • As we celebrate the incredible landmark of publishing 500 issues of Guitarist, esteemed editors of our tome, past and present, share their favourite – and sometimes most embarrassing – memories of working for the magazine

Sister Rosetta Tharpe • The evolutionary timeline of rock history includes iconic names such as T-Bone Walker, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Little Richard and many others – and yet it’s only in recent years that another name has started to get...