To outsiders, Eddie Van Halen seemed to be sitting on top of the world in December 1979. The first two Van Halen albums had gone platinum, the band had just wrapped up a massive world tour, and he’d been widely proclaimed one of the best – if not the best – guitarist in rock and roll. But behind the scenes Eddie had rapidly discovered that fame had its price. He was irritated with manufacturers who’d cloned his trademark guitar, with big-name players copping his techniques, and with journalists misrepresenting his …

Decades ago, a fellow blues enthusiast sent me a package of official papers related to the life of Fulton Allen, who recorded as Blind Boy Fuller. Written during the 1930s by government officials, social workers, and physicians, these documents offer unique insight into the life of a legendary Southern bluesman. The stories they tell of poverty, ill health, and unhappiness with management and record companies are as blues-inducing as Blind Boy Fuller’s darkest recordings. To ensure their accuracy, all of the quotations in my account retain the parlance and punctuation …

For four decades, Willie Dixon loomed at the forefront of Chicago blues, working as a bassist, arranger, band leader, producer, talent scout, agent, A&R man, and music publisher. His most enduring contributions, though, were the songs he wrote. Dixon made Muddy Waters the “Hoochie Coochie Man,” taught Howlin’ Wolf “Evil” and “Spoonful,” and showed Sonny Boy Williamson how to “Bring It on Home.” “Willie Dixon is the man who changed the style of the blues in Chicago,” said Johnny Shines, a regular on the scene. “As a songwriter and producer, …

Les Paul is a towering figure of modern music. A performer for more than 80 years, he made unsurpassed contributions to the sound, scope, and design of the electric guitar. He was among the very first performers to use overdubbing, delay and phasing effects, tape echo, and multi-track recording. He designed the first eight-track recorder. As noted British critic Charles Shaar Murray describes, “If anybody is the missing link between Charlie Christian and Jimi Hendrix, it’s Les Paul. He was the first person to really understand the extent to which …

By Jon Sievert
I first saw Les Paul in 1975 at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall, a few months after he began performing again following a decade of retirement spurred by his professional and marital split with Mary Ford. By then I’d been working with Guitar Player for several years as a freelance writer and photographer but I wasn’t on assignment this night. I just wanted to see and photograph him for myself. My parents both loved Les and Mary so I’d heard his records when I was quite …

A singing street-corner evangelist, Blind Willie Johnson created some of the most intensely moving records of the 20th century. Void of frivolity or uncertainty, his 78s from the 1920s and ’30s are clearly the work of a pained believer seeking redemption. A slide guitarist nonpareil, Johnson had an exquisite sense of timing and tone, using a pocketknife or ring slider to duplicate his vocal inflections or to produce an unforgettable phrase from a single strike of a string. Eric Clapton cites his “It’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine” as “probably the …

By the time of our 1979 interview, Mick Taylor, master of slide guitar and the poignant solo, had accumulated some of the most stellar credentials imaginable. Thirteen years earlier, just after he’d turned seventeen, Mick had launched his career with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, touring the U.S. and playing brilliantly on six albums. “He had the hard job of replacing Peter Green in my band,” Mayall wrote in 1970, “and over the period of two years made the grade to where people who played the guitar used to crowd every concert …

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle imbued literature’s most enduring “consulting detective” with both extraordinary and very human qualities. Sherlock Holmes has keen powers of observation, unassailable logic, and a bloodhound’s zeal for tracking prey. He also loves music. One of the most enduring images of Holmes is with violin in hand, playing something from the classical canon or riffing around as he ponders a case’s complexities. This image of Holmes appears not only in the original stories published in England more than a century ago, but also on the silver screen …

Four years before the release of his debut solo album Tones, Eric Johnson and I sat down to do an extensive interview. At the time it was unusual for me to interview a guitarist who didn’t have national recognition or even an album to promote, but all it took was a pair of ears to hear that Johnson already was an extraordinary musician.
 As a staff editor for Guitar Player magazine, I was continually hearing about superb guitarists who, for various reasons, were largely unknown. What instantly set Eric apart was …

For decades rumors have swirled that Keith Richards is a drugged-out burnout one wheeze away from the afterlife. Forget it. Richards is, in fact, charming, resilient, and among rock’s most articulate musicians. Don’t believe it? Listen to the hundreds of songs he’s written or read his autobiography, Life. If musicians were light bulbs, this guy would be 120-watts.
 I’ve done three interviews with Keith. The first, in 1992, was a three-hour encounter in Manhattan for a Guitar Player magazine cover story. The second, below, took place on July 14, 1994, at …

The best description I’ve heard of what it takes to be an excellent interviewer of musicians came from Ry Cooder. We’d been talking about his performing with celebrated players from around the world. “What’s the attitude you approach them with?” I asked. “Like you go to a master when you want to learn or be in their presence,” Cooder responded. “The thing is to empty yourself. If you’re truly committed in a real way, you come across as a receptacle of some kind, a vessel to be filled up. You’re …

On July 23, 1978, Van Halen and AC/DC opened the show for the Pat Travers Band, Foreigner, and Aerosmith at the Day on the Green concert at the Oakland Coliseum. Van Halen was midway through their first world tour, and this was their first northern California appearance. The band delivered a spectacular set. With Dave Lee Roth singing, they covered most of their debut album – “On Fire,” “I’m the One,” “Runnin’ With the Devil,” “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love,” “Atomic Punk,” “Feel Your Love Tonight,” and “You Really Got Me” …

With the breakup of the famous comedic team of Williams & Walker, Bert Williams quickly came into his own as a solo artist. In 1910, he joined the cast of the world-famous Ziegfeld Follies. During the ensuing decade, he’d become one of Broadway’s most beloved comedians and a great hero to African Americans. Even though he still wore blackface, he was finally able to create characters with universal appeal and rarely seen humanity. His teaming with the rubber-kneed Australian comic Leon Errol had audiences rolling in the aisles, as did …

In 1893, Bert Williams and George Walker began performing together in minstrel shows. They found that by donning blackface and calling themselves “The Two Real Coons,” they could get booked into better vaudeville venues in Los Angeles, New York, London, and other major cities. Their skill at joking, singing, and cakewalking led to them starring in their own off-Broadway shows, such as The Policy Players and Sons of Ham. In 1901, they began making records for the Victor Talking Machine Co. Our previous article, Bert Williams & George Walker: The …