Table of contents for August 2024 in Total Guitar

The amazing Arianna Powell is back with another great lesson courtesy of Pickup Music. There’s also a video to go along with this article, so check that out if you want to hear how it sounds when played by a pro. Before we get into the licks, let’s familiarise ourselves with the tone, chords and scales we’ll need. This track is a tip of the hat to ’60s surf rock, paying homage to classic artists like The Ventures and Dick Dale, but it’s not just the golden oldies utilising this sound. Modern greats Khruangbin draw from the well, too. To emulate this awesome sound, we need a clean, twangy tone and some echo. The bridge single-coils of a Strat or Gretsch’s Filter’Tronloaded hollowbodies are the ideal starting point. If you’re…

Formed in 1973 in Sydney, Australia by Scottish born brothers Malcolm and Angus Young, AC/DC need little in the way of introduction. There have been various lineup changes in the band, most notably Brian Johnson taking over as lead vocalist in 1980 following Bon Scott’s death, and Stevie Young taking over rhythm guitar duties from Malcolm in 2014 due to failing health. For our purposes though, Angus and Malcolm represent the bedrock of the AC/DC sound and it’s what we’re looking at here in our lesson. Angus Young’s influences range from Muddy Waters, Freddie King and Chuck Berry – and you can probably hear a kind of turbo-charged version of Chuck’s rock ’n’ roll style in Angus’ soloing approach. Malcolm was influenced by many of the same players, but it’s…

This Led Zeppelin classic influenced early Heart both musically and in their love of Tolkien-inspired lyrics. As Nancy Wilson tells TG: “When I was at university in Forest Grove, Oregon, I heard that song for the first time on the record player that I had in my dorm room. I was like, ‘I’m going to get a mandolin immediately!’ The sound of that instrument was so magic. I got a ride to Sherman Clay music store in Portland, and I found a Japanese knockoff of an f-hole Gibson-style mandolin, which I still play onstage.” The Wilsons’ cover of The Battle Of Evermore didn’t happen until 1992, when they took a break from Heart with their informal acoustic project, The Lovemongers. This collective was more in the spirit of the MTV…

One is the bearded Texan hombre that Jimi Hendrix once called his favourite guitarist; the other, “the Ginger Elvis” who helped pioneer stoner rock with Kyuss in the ’90s. But ZZ Top’s Billy F. Gibbons and Queens Of The Stone Age mastermind Josh Homme have more in common than you might think, and their mutual love of sleazy desert rock is on full display in this QOTSA cover of the 1973 Top deep cut. 2005’s Lullabies To Paralyze album found the ever-collaborative Queens collide with Gibbons, who provided lead guitar and vocals to third single Burn The Witch and this excellent cover of Billy’s own Tres Hombres cut Precious And Grace, which was included as a bonus track, and features the late Mark Lanegan on co-lead vocals. Before linking up…

Like many of the tracks on Rage Against The Machine’s 2000 album Renegades, this is not so much a cover as a total rewriting of an old song. The tempo, key, groove, and instrumentation are all entirely new, and only the lyrics really survive. The 1983 original by Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force does have a funky clean guitar part in the first verse that could perhaps have been converted into a Rage riff and some wild synth lines that might perhaps have been reinterpreted with help from his Whammy pedal, but Tom Morello opts for entirely new ideas. It’s in Drop D, so you know you’re hearing Tom Morello’s 1982 Telecaster, which he has used for every Drop D riff of his career. Morello’s rig has been similarly…

In 1980, when Diamond Head were rising stars of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, their epic track Am I Evil? was widely cited as one of the heaviest pieces of its time. Making similar use of the eerie tritone interval featured in Black Sabbath’s defining song Black Sabbath, it’s the kind of music tailor-made to send shivers down the spine and provoke the same sense of dread associated with horror movies. One of its key attributes in achieving that is its usage of time – with the doomier chords ringing out much slower to the mid-tempo palm-muted sections, highlighting the intensity and drama of each part. As a band who made no secret of how much they learned from the NWOBHM movement, Metallica released their own version of…

If the original version of American Woman – written and recorded by Canadian rockers The Guess Who – sounds like the product of an improvised jam, that’s because it is. Guitarist Randy Bachman, who would later go on to lead Bachman-Turner Overdrive, had broken a string on stage and started strumming a riff after replacing it, prompting the band to join in and make it up as they went along. The finished song would end up topping the US chart. Fast forward 30 years and American Woman would find a new lease of life through Lenny Kravitz’s rendition on the soundtrack for espionage comedy Austin Powers: The Spy Who Sh*gged Me. Lenny’s version would omit the acoustic intro and start with the main riff, performed in a lower tuning with…

Alan Merrill, the singer for British pop rock band Arrows, explained the inspiration behind their most famous song back in 2016, explaining how the group “needed a fourth single”, and it was producer Mickie Most who told him to “think of a simple three-chord rocker with an anthemic sing-along chorus and a great riff.” Few would deny he met that brief, even if the song didn’t give Arrows a hit. But by chance, Joan Jett was on tour in England with her band The Runaways in 1976 when she saw Arrows performing I Love Rock ’N’ Roll on their own ITV television show. She would then record her own version in 1979 with guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook from the Sex Pistols, before cutting the definitive version in…

100 GREATEST COVERS One sage saying about cover versions goes something like, ‘if you can’t better it, change it completely or leave it well alone’. Witness Hendrix reinventing Dylan’s original, or The Byrds’s electric 12-string take on Bob’s Mr Tambourine Man, and Joe Cocker’s sublime reworking of The Beatles’ With A Little Help From My Friends. Stevie Ray Vaughan evidently didn’t get the memo, as his take on Hendrix’s slice of Electric Ladyland genius (which made a posthumous #1 on the UK singles chart) is a faithful, if fire-breathing, remake. At just over eight minutes long, it’s really more like one of Jimi’s live renditions, as on Hendrix In The West, where Hendrix retains the essence of his composition but extends and paraphrases it. Were it not for SRV’s even…

100 GREATEST COVERS The original version of Hallelujah, written and recorded by Leonard Cohen in 1984, was by all accounts a challenge to realise at its full potential. The Canadian folk legend is said to have drafted 150 verses, deliberating over countless versions of each line in order to unravel the version that finally appeared on his seventh album Various Positions. The song was first covered by John Cale in 1991 before Jeff Buckley recorded his version for his debut album Grace in 1994, the only album released before his tragic death three years later. Though it was performed in the same key, there are several notable differences – the first being Buckley’s higher range as a vocalist in contrast to Cohen’s baritone; the second being the guitars brought right…

Foo Fighters guitarist Chis Shiflett is also a solo artist in his own right, and his latest EP Starry Nights & Campfire Lights includes covers of two great old rock tracks – Thin Lizzy’s Cowboy Song and the ballad Don’t You Ever Leave Me by Hanoi Rocks, the Finnish band that did so much to inspire Guns N’ Roses. For Chris, there’s an art to reimagining famous songs, where you have to strike a fine balance between paying tribute to the original and putting your own personal spin on things... You spoke about your love for Thin Lizzy in your last TG interview. What drew you to Cowboy Song in particular? I’ve always wanted to do some sort of countrified version of it. It’s funny when you listen to songs…

PEOPLE ✪ NEWS ✪ NOISE To some people, a guitar’s origin isn’t a point that gets much consideration; to others, it’s incredibly important. You might expect a UK-made electric to be the reserve of high-end, boutique custom builders, but PJD is seemingly on a mission to destroy this concept, as it unleashes its all-new Apprentice range. We say range – it currently comprises the offset St John shape you see above, with plans for the singlecut Carey to arrive later in the year. But, the headline here is that the guitar pictured above is made in the UK, and will set you back £1 under 900 quid! Available to order direct from PJD, the PJD Apprentice St. John features a lightweight obeche body, maple bolt-on neck and rosewood fingerboard. The…

Youtopia Sheffield rock juggernauts Bring Me The Horizon recently unleashed their seventh studio album Post Human: Nex Gen. This month’s riff features on track two of the album, and guitarist Lee Malia uses octave shapes and string bending to add a unique twist to the track. Fret the G# octave shape on the 11th and 13th frets with your first and fourth fingers. Use your first finger to lightly rest on the fourth string to keep it muted and strum across the three strings to produce a clean octave sound. Finally, use your wrist to turn your hand to evenly bend both strings up and down a semitone. Use the same approach for the D# octave shape and in the same area of the fretboard find the C#add9 chord shape.…

The synth-powered rock anthem that gave Van Halen their only US number one single, Jump gave the band recognition far beyond the rock ’n’ roll audience. Its instantly recognisable melody was performed by Edward Van Halen on an Oberheim OB-Xa instead of the 1958 Gibson Flying V and Steve Ripley stereo guitars that dominated the rest of the 1984 album, though his guitars are more prominent during the pre-chorus, solo and outro sections. English fingerstyle guitarist Mike Dawes wasn’t the first to cover Jump – percussive acoustic guitar trailblazer Eric Roche did a great version before. But Mike came up with idea of a one-man band acoustic version on the night that Eddie passed away in October 2020. “I stayed up until 6am compelled to try and arrange this,” he…

20 years before Beyoncé, The White Stripes had a hit with their cover of Dolly Parton’s Jolene, recorded live in the rock Mecca of Blackpool in 2004. This was actually their second release of the song. A studio take was released as the b-side to Hello Operator back in 2000, but it was the live take that attracted attention. Parton’s original kicks off with a fingerpicked classical guitar part, and features an interweaving steel string part that arrives in the second chorus. White played the live version entirely on his Airline Res-o-glass. His fingerpicked intro contains a nod to the original part, but it isn’t a reproduction. The original part is played in C# minor, using an A minor shape and a capo at the 4th fret. White, who sings…

In 1978, Rocky Horror Picture Show star Tim Curry launched a music career. Working with producer Bob Ezrin months before he would be tapped for Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Curry’s debut album included Sloe Gin. “That song initially came to me via [producer] Kevin Shirley who was born in South Africa,” explains Joe Bonamassa. “It was a hit there but nowhere else.” “I have to give a special shout out to Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner who played on the original version,” Joe acknowledges. “They were basically Bob Ezrin’s ringers. The first time I played it, people applauded like they knew the song. And they didn’t know the song, it just sounded familiar. That was a very cool thing. That song has been with me for twenty years now. What…

Creating a film based on The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band probably sounded like a great idea. Some had their doubts about stars Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees, but Aerosmith agreed to play the Future Villain Band chiefly so they could work with producer George Martin. The well-medicated Aerosmith had a reputation for slow recording, so Martin told them once they were done they could see Jeff Beck at Trax, a New York club. Aerosmith whipped through the recording in two takes and headed to Trax, only to find Martin had hoaxed them: Beck was not playing. Aerosmith’s version of the song sticks close to the original instrumentation, although Joe Perry used a Strat, unlike George Harrison’s Les Paul. Joe Perry tells TG: “I always felt like…

Originally appeared on Burnin’, Bob Marley’s 1973 album with the Wailers, I Shot The Sheriff’s is Marley’s iconic protest song aimed at police harassment. Marley and Peter Tosh shared guitar duties; with wah-wah effects and tight, backbeat-style rhythm, Tosh also supplying lead licks, plus piano and organ. Next to Eric Clapton’s more sophisticated cover, the Marley recording sounds organic and earthy. Clapton maintained Marley’s original key of G minor, but turned the bridge’s Eb chord into the slicker Ebmaj7. George Terry, Clapton’s six-string sideman at the time, probably played rhythm, leaving EC to plant understated minor pentatonic fills that honoured the original. In fact, Eric was so worried about covering the song that he sought Marley’s approval. This was granted, although Bob later complained that the cover got all the…

The title track of David Bowie’s 1970 album passed unremarked on release, only appearing on singles as a b-side and rarely garnering comment from reviewers. Bowie and guitarist Mick Ronson produced Lulu’s 1973 cover version, which made the song famous. Lulu’s version lacked Ronson’s guitar riff, though, replaced by a new saxophone hook. With customary anti-corporate instincts, Nirvana largely ignored their own hits for their MTV Unplugged session in December 1993. Instead, they pulled out album tracks and deep cut covers. When the album was released in December 1994 following Cobain’s death, it was The Man Who Sold the World that became the de facto single, gaining heavy airplay on MTV and alternative radio stations. For mourning fans, it became a memorial. It was a testament to Cobain’s ability to…

100 GREATEST COVERS In a recent interview, Fleetwood Mac’s drummer Mick Fleetwood revealed that only recently did the band’s Stevie Nicks discover Black Magic Woman to be founder Peter Green’s composition, and not a Santana song. But such was the cover’s success in America where it hit #4 on the Billboard Hot 100, that it’s a common misconception. Fleetwood Mac’s second single, which made a half-hearted UK #37, begins with a haunting three-note D minor chord at the 17th fret of Green’s Les Paul. Drenched in reverb, and sustained due to Peter vibrating the chord with all three fingers, nothing like it had been heard before. Likewise, Green’s 24-bar solo, played on his recently out-of-phase-wired Les Paul, which was simple but perfect. Based on Otis Rush’s All Your Love, as…

100 GREATEST COVERS The 1994 Nine Inch Nails track was Trent Reznor’s agonised examination of loneliness and drug abuse. The standout feature of the guitar track is the chilling B5 (add #11) that opens the track, played in Drop D tuning 9-9-9-10-x-x. Johnny Cash’s reimagining of the song dispensed with that dissonance, but lost none of the emotional impact, thanks in large part to the obvious frailty of Cash’s voice. The 2002 music video showed Cash near the end of his life, and following his death in 2003 the video became his memorial, much as The Man Who Sold The World became Kurt Cobain’s. Even Trent Reznor said “That song isn’t mine anymore,” describing his response to the video as “tears, silence, goosebumps”. Tom Petty sideman Mike Campbell played acoustic…

PEDAL “MY PEDALBOARD SHOULD BE CALLED 50 SHADES OF GAIN!” CARDINAL BLACK’S CHRIS BUCK REVEALS HIS NEW SIGNATURE PEDAL Having been vocal about his love for ThorpyFx pedals for many years, Cardinal Black guitarist Chris Buck has finally teamed up with the company to create his own signature Electric Lightning drive and boost. As you’d expect from a man who has won the respect of guitar heroes Slash and Adrian Smith, it’s a wonderfully versatile tool for creating sounds that will dazzle all in its path, as Chris explains… How exactly did this collaboration with ThorpyFx come about? It feels like us doing something together has been inevitable in some respects. There’s nearly always been a Thorpy pedal on my ’board – from the Gunshot to the Heavy Water to…

Written in 1969 by Bonnie Bramlett and Leon Russell, and then recorded by Bramlett and her husband Delaney with none other than Eric Clapton on guitar, Superstar would be covered by a number of big-selling artists, including MOR superegos The Carpenters and soul legend Luther Vandross. However, it was the Sonic Youth rendition, recorded for a 1994 tribute album to The Carpenters, that marked the greatest departure from its original form, with singer/guitarist Thurston Moore’s dreamy vocals evoking a heightened sense of melancholy and fatigue. It all starts with a pair of acoustic guitars – one strumming barre chords lower down the neck and another playing a single note melody higher up – before overdriven octaves on the low E and D strings, performed by co-guitarist Lee Ranaldo in the…

Enter Sandman may well be Metallica’s most famous song, but Sad But True – from the same 1991 self-titled release aka The Black Album – can’t be too far behind. Its mid-tempo stomp and lower tuning made it one of the heaviest tracks on the record, at least in terms of groove and subterranean weight. In 2021, to coincide with the album’s 30th anniversary, the all-star tribute album The Metallica Blacklist was released, with everyone from Ghost to Biffy Clyro to Sam Fender contributing their own versions of various tracks. One of the stand-outs was St. Vincent’s take on Sad But True, which boldly traded the meaty high-gain guitar aggression for a synth-based eeriness closer to what you might expect to hear on a Nine Inch Nails record. While James…

Originally written for The Roar Of The Greasepaint – The Smell Of The Crowd, the 1964 Newley and Bricusse musical, Feeling Good became a standard thanks to Nina Simone’s towering 1965 performance of the tune. When Muse covered it in 2000, there were no plans for it to make the Origin Of Symmetry album, but it ended up as that record’s fourth single. Although it charted at a relatively modest #24, it went on to reach Gold status, matching Plug In Baby for sales. Muse’s version sees the horn riff from Simone’s version transferred to bass guitar, the massive sound of an entire horn section replicated with octave and fuzz effects. Matt Bellamy stayed relatively close to the piano part from Simone’s version, with its consistent triplet pattern. In true…

This is a song that seemed destined to remain a little-known gem. Robert Johnson’s original version was laid down at his last ever recording session on June 20, 1937, but wasn’t released until 13 years after his death. Zeppelin’s cover, too, was released posthumously, appearing in 1990 after Jimmy Page negotiated its release from the BBC archives. Each verse of the Zeppelin version plays the main riff four times, then goes into a standard 12-bar blues progression. The Johnson original is harder to follow if you’re unfamiliar with early acoustic blues. Like many solo singer/guitarists of the era, Johnson simply changes the chords as he feels them. His intro can be counted as two 4/4 bars and one 5/4 bar, and his first verse has 13 4/4 bars, with three…

Judy Garland’s performances of Over The Rainbow are the benchmark, of course, and it’s appropriate to compare Beck with her, because Jeff was a master of giving guitar melodies a vocal quality. Voices, of course, do not have frets, and Beck used his whammy bar ingeniously to mimic the way vocalists swoop into notes and slide between them. It can be difficult to tell on recordings when Beck uses a slide, because he could create such similar effects using the Strat tremolo. In a 2023 TG interview, Joe Perry recalled seeing Beck perform a slide version: “That two and a half minutes, the audience was on the edge of their seats.” The version Beck is best known for, though, was played without a slide. There is video of him performing…

In 1978, while The Clash were working on their second album Give ’Em Enough Rope at The Automatt studio in San Francisco, guitarists Joe Strummer and Mick Jones were toying with the owner’s collection of classic jukeboxes when they heard the Bobby Fuller Four version of I Fought The Law. The song was penned by Sonny Curtis, who played guitar for rock ’n’ roll legend Buddy Holly and was a member of his backing band The Crickets. The Clash’s recording of I Fought The Law initially appeared on the band’s 1979 EP The Cost Of Living and the subsequent American edition of their debut album. It would become one of their best-known songs and a live staple for the members in various projects for years to come. Although mainly built…

100 GREATEST COVERS Van Halen knew how to take someone else’s song and inject it with own sense of panache – just listen to their versions of You’re No Good, Ice Cream Man and (Oh) Pretty Woman and you’ll see what we mean. But it’s their rendition of You Really Got Me by The Kinks that demonstrates this best. Originally released in 1964, You Really Got Me was written by Ray Davies, although it was his brother Dave who played the riff that is widely acclaimed as the blueprint for heavy metal. In their version, Van Halen threw in as much charm and energy as humanly possible to truly make it their own. They stuck fairly close to the structure of the original, but with Edward turning up the gain…

100 GREATEST COVERS Talking to TG from behind a mask that falls somewhere in between the aesthetics of Daft Punk, Darth Vader and Power Rangers, with a heavily effected voice to disguise his true identity, Lord Phobos is certainly one of the more unusual characters you’ll find in these pages. He’s responsible for the guitar work in Canadian quartet TWRP, who have made waves as the backing band behind American comedic duo Ninja Sex Party. As well as original music, the two groups have collaborated on a series of albums named Under The Covers – where they reimagine famous tracks by Pink Floyd, Van Halen, the Bee Gees and many more. “It’s been really fun working with Ninja Sex Party,” Lord Phobos says, holding a microphone running into a vocal…

REVIEW Walrus Audio doesn’t stand still, they like to revisit their pedals with the aim of bringing out enhanced versions. The Julia chorus pedal led to the Julianna and the Slö reverb begat the Slöer, now we have the Monumental Harmonic Stereo Tremolo, based on its mono Monument sibling. The Monumental can accommodate mono, stereo in/stereo out and mono in/stereo out operation. It also sports three easily-recalled onboard presets and extends the Monument feature set by increasing the number of waveshapes and the timing divisions for the tap tempo footswitch which now, has a secondary function (when held) of ramping the tremolo speed up and down for rotary speaker style speed changes. Also new, is the ability to morph between standard tremolo and the phasier harmonic tremolo found on a…