Guitar Magazine June 2021

It’s no exaggeration to say that this issue of Guitar Magazine is feature-packed, and we’ve rolled out the big guns in the shape of Gibson’s Murphy Lab Les Pauls and the man with perhaps the greatest right arm in the history of rock’n’ roll guitar playing: Pete Townshend. Read our exclusive new interview with The Who’s incendiary guitar icon on p26, as he holds court on Clapton, Hendrix and the new Super Deluxe Edition of the band’s landmark 1967 album The Who Sell Out. Though Townshend often took guitar-distressing to visceral extremes, more subtly induced wear and tear has been applied to the aforementioned Murphy Lab Les Pauls that we put to the test from p62 onwards. Somehow, despite the fact that Fender’s first Relic finishes were unveiled in 1995 and…

HUW BAINES DAMAGE PLANNER As a freelance journalist, Huw has written for The Guardian, Vice and Clash Magazine. As a musician, he has written a handful of three-chord punk songs on a glitter-red mid-1990s Telecaster that wears the scars of shows, house moves and a tumble down a flight of stairs. As a result, Huw reckons ageing should come naturally. “Earning your wear and tear can feel good,” he says, “like a potted history of your time with a guitar.” For this issue, Huw interviewed Ben Howard about his new LP, Collections From The Whiteout. Flip to p34 for more. SAM ROBERTS BLEMISH EXHIBITIONIST Associate editor Sam began his playing career with a starter-pack Aria S-Type but these days plays a Fender Jaguar. He met James Gascoigne of James’ Home Of Tone for this issue’s…

Join the conversation Email us at editors@guitar.com With the ongoing pandemic condemning us to yet more months stuck at home with nothing but free time on our hands, it’s no surprise that many of you have turned once again to modding and guitar-building to keep yourselves entertained… ACOUSTASONIC HIGHWAYS Just before lockdown started last year, two things happened that peed me off: a good friend of mine bought a new Fender Jazzmaster; and Fender released the Acoustasonic Stratocaster! I couldn’t afford to buy either of these things (hence why I was peed off!), so I thought I’d use my free time to make my own Jazzmaster as a lockdown project instead. I bought an unfinished paddle neck kit and built it. I finished it to look like an Acoustasonic Strat, finishing the ‘top’ and…

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What first inspired you to pick up a guitar? Sam Holmes: “To be totally honest, at the beginning it was definitely to impress girls. I’m sure everyone says that but it is true! I stuck it out because I fell in love with writing songs. I remember in the early days I purposely didn’t listen to any other music because I thought that would make my writing truly unique. Let’s be thankful I didn’t record any of those songs. From there, I discovered the likes of John Martyn, Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley and I was away.” Harry Phillips: “I can’t remember what first inspired it but the inspiration to keep going with it came through the addictive properties that learning guitar has, then quickly starting a band at school became a priority,…

Recorded at RCA Studio A in Nashville, Tennessee, Blackberry Smoke’s seventh studio LP was produced by “extreme guitar nerd” and Grammy winner Dave Cobb. “We’d all been in lockdown for a few months before we started,” says frontman Charlie Starr, “so everyone was chomping at the bit to get some work done.” Smoke’s first album with three guitar players was tracked in just five days. Here, Starr selects his guitar highlights. YOU HEAR GEORGIA “I co-wrote this one with my buddy Dave Lizmi [formerly of the Four Horsemen]. It wasn’t entirely finished but Dave Cobb heard me messing around with it during a break one day and asked, ‘What is that?’ I said it wasn’t finished yet and he said, ‘Go finish it. We have to record it.’ So I went back…