
Carlos Santana aims for “the same place Charlie Parker, Beethoven, or Stravinsky would go to” as he solos on one of his gold-leaf-finished Paul Reed Smith custom Singlecuts.
The legend says the world needs to be “far out,” and he’s cut a new album, Blessings and Miracles, to take it there. He talks about his fabled tone, advice from Miles Davis, his search for universal melodies, and stepping outside the cage.
Carlos Santana plays like a superhighway. His notes—always exquisite and succulent—are founded on terra firma yet travel to many places. The 74-year-old 6-string guru often uses the word multidimensional to describe his technicolor sonic thumbprint. And, through more than a half-century of recordings and concerts, that multidimensionality speaks as articulately as the beautiful unison-string bends in his band’s classic “Samba Pa Ti,” projecting his devotion to melody, intention, the echoes of his influences, imagination, inspiration, awareness, fidelity to his art, and a desire to communicate.
Of all those dimensions within Santana’s playing, his desire to communicate and his awareness that his music can telegraph a subtly different message to each listener may be the most important. It’s key to understanding the search he embarks on every time he takes a solo or writes a song. Or makes a new album, like the recently unveiled Santana band recording Blessings and Miracles, which seems to draw on every period of his career—or at least all the aspects of his search for, as he called it in the title of his 2014 autobiography, the Universal Tone.
Santana, Rob Thomas, American Authors - Move (Official Music Video)
“I think of melodies that are universally accepted—by Greeks, Apaches, Puerto Ricans, Aboriginals … everybody,” Santana explains. “Because everyone understands the sacred language of melody, nothing speaks more clearly, and you can hear the way melodies transcend any cultural differences. For example, play the first four notes of ‘Nature Boy,’ by Nat King Cole. [He sings the intro to the song’s melody, and then sings the same notes with different phrasing.] See, it’s also ‘Danny Boy’—the same four notes.
“We’re in the business of getting people’s attention,” he continues. “Understanding the universal nature of melody is important. I have never created and will never create an album that’s background music. I don’t do background music. When you go to hear Santana, like the people I love … Miles [Davis], Stevie Ray Vaughan, the music has to take center stage and captivate your attention. It tries to offer you something that’s really good in you and for you, that you aren’t aware of.”
Everyone understands the sacred language of melody.
One of those somethings is the long, held note—an emotional trigger that’s among his historic signatures. “Feedback is good for you,” Santana says. “With the correct tone between the pickups and speakers, it’s a living light, it’s constantly breathing. But feedback coming from a pedal is bad feedback. It’s like a cadaver. There’s no life in there. So I don’t use pedals for sustain. I walk around and mark the floor where the sound becomes a laser beam between me and my guitar, so it’s constantly breathing. That’s why we like Star Wars. You get to hear Darth Vader breathe.” Parenthetically, that notion also correlates with the healing feeling that comes with yoga’s soothing ujjayi, or ocean, breath.
With the title Blessing and Miracles tagged to his namesake outfit’s 26th album, it’s no surprise that Santana self-produced the recording with high goals. “There’s no difference between radio today and in the ’50s,” he relates. “It was corny, boring, and then along came the Doors with an eight-minute version of ‘Light My Fire,’ and the Chambers Brothers, with ‘Time.’ I grew up in the ’60s with the ground-zero cultural revolution, so it’s natural for me to play my guitar sometimes melodically and contained, and sometimes like a hurricane. If I play something like ‘Maria Maria’ [from Santana’s 1999 mega-hit Supernatural] it feels commercial because it has a regular melody, but if you put some Sonny Sharrock and John McLaughlin influence in there, that’s radical! And that’s exactly what the world needs today—to get far out!”
At 74, the éminence grise of Latin-rock guitar is still taking chances and believes that music can change the world.
Photo by Maryanne Bilham
To get far out music to the people, Santana figured he also had to go deep inside the industry. So, over the several-year course of making the 15-song album, he recruited Chris Stapleton, Steve Winwood, Living Colour’s Corey Glover, Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, Chick and Gayle Corea, and his old Supernatural teammate Rob Thomas. Santana and Thomas’ song on that triple-platinum album, “Smooth,” spent 12 weeks on top of the Billboard charts.
“I’m at a point where intention, motive, and purpose are very, very clear,” Santana says. “I wanted names that would help get me back on radio. We didn’t do any planning like that for Africa Speaks. [The exploratory Afro-Latin album the Santana band made in 2019 with Spanish guest vocalist Buika.] But now is the time.
Carlos Santana’s Gear
Carlos Santana is using three PRS custom guitars for his Las Vegas residency: two gold-leaf-finished Single Cuts—one with a vibrato bridge—and a red flame-top Single Cut. In this photo, he's playing an earlier Double Cut PRS signature model, but he now favors his Single Cuts.
Photo by Roberto Finizio
Guitars
- PRS Custom-Built Single Cut non-trem with gold leaf finish (main guitar)
- PRS Custom-Built Single Cut tremolo with gold leaf finish
- PRS Custom-Built Single Cut non-trem with red flametop
- Toru Nittono Jazz Electric Nylon model
Strings & Picks
- Paul Reed Smith Signature Series (.0095–.044)
- Dunlop Carlos Santana Signature medium soft
- V-Picks custom 3 mm in red
Amps
- Dumble Overdrive Reverb 100-watt head
- Allston Neuro 100-watt head
- Tyrant Dictator 4x12 with Weber Gray Wolfs
Effects
- Real McCoy Custom RMC10 wah
“It’s imperative to uphold enthusiasm no matter what the world is going through, because we can push the buttons and click the switches to change the narrative. There’s too much fear and separation on the planet—too much crawling instead of flying like a hummingbird. So people find a lot of ammunition to justify why they’re unhappy. We with the Santana band say get away from here with that stuff. We override it and we change it, because we want joy—which we can provide through our music—to transmogrify fear. It’s that simple. I have confidence that, at 74, I can take this music to the four corners of the world and touch many people’s hearts.”
So Blessings and Miracles pendulums between the wild and the calculated, and, not surprisingly, Carlos Santana brilliantly breathes in both realms, as he has since earning his bones playing blues in the strip clubs of Tijuana, and then as a musical staple of San Francisco’s—as Otis Redding put it—“love crowd.” Even when the songs purr, like “Breathing Underwater,” a graceful textural-pop ballad his daughter, Stella, brought to the album, there is a radical quality to his playing. It’s in those long held notes that trail into ascendant feedback, in the exquisite slow bends that move like a human voice, and in the squalls of sound inspired by his touchstones Sharrock and Coltrane.
I have never created and will never create an album that’s background music. I don’t do background music.
Blessings and Miracles opens with “Ghost of Future Pull/New Light,” an overture crafted from bestial feedback, percussion, and melody. Then it plunges into the bold, Latin-rock instrumental “Santana Celebration.” That pairing is a flashback to the band’s early ’70s days, and, in particular, recalls the cosmic sizzle of the opening of 1974’s Lotus, arguably the most exciting, inspired live guitar recording of the classic-rock era. “Rumbalero” breaks the pattern. It’s Latin electro-fusion, with Santana’s son Salvador on vocals and composer/horn player/vocalist Asdru Sierra. There, the guitar constantly tosses off explosive mini-melodies as if they were kernels of popping corn.
Elsewhere there’s “Joy,” a reggae song featuring Stapleton, who wrote its uplifting lyrics at Santana’s urging. And “Move,” which sounds like exactly what it is—Santana and Thomas’ update of “Smooth.” With Winwood, Santana takes on Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” The social-justice-fueled rocker “Peace Power” features Glover, and the gritty metal critique “America for Sale” has Hammett and Death Angel’s Mark Osegueda as its guests. Both Coreas play on the merry, peaceful “Angel Choir/All Together.” By the time that’s all unreeled, it sounds as if Santana aimed not only at radio, but at nearly every format. And he’s crafted another “Europa”-level melodic-guitar showpiece with “Song for Cindy,” written for his wife, Santana band drummer Cindy Blackman Santana.
What does Carlos Santana practice the most? “Learning to dive into totality, absoluteness, and infinity in one note.” Here he squeezes a Blue Africa Santana SE Doublecut with custom graphics, by Paul Reed Smith. It’s one of seven made concurrent with the Africa Speaks album.
Photo by Jay Blakesberg
Despite all the guest vocalists, the real lead singer, of course, is Carlos Santana, whose custom Paul Reed Smiths ooze emotion. (PRS recently released another limited-edition Santana signature model, the Abraxas 50, to celebrate the anniversary of the Abraxas album’s 1970 release.) After all his decades of gorgeous tone, that’s to be expected. As is the presence of the wah-wah pedal, which, under his foot, can quack like a peyote-eating duck, roar like a tyrannosaurus, attenuate his singing strings, and make notes kaleidoscopic. Santana is among the greatest proponents of the effect, and has been since 1970’s “Hope You’re Feeling Better.” But at that point, the only pedal that would become part of his sonic mug shot was more novelty than staple for the guitar legend.
“I first heard the wah-wah within Cream’s Disraeli Gears, and then Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Child,’ and Mel Brown used it incredibly well in ‘Eighteen Pounds of Unclean Chitlins,’ which is super funky,” Santana says.
“I had only used it on some songs in the studio, when one day in 1970, I was in an elevator in New York City with Miles Davis and Keith Jarrett, and Michael Shrieve and Michael Carabello from my band, and Miles goes: ‘Hey, you got a wah-wah?’ I said ‘no.’ And he said, ‘I’m playing my trumpet through a wah-wah. You gotta get an effin’ wah-wah, Carlos.’ I said ‘okay.’ So I got an effin’ wah-wah, and I’m grateful Miles took me out of that other zone where I had no wah-wah regularly, so I could learn to create textures with it.”
The original Santana band line-up (left to right): Michael Shrieve, David Brown, Michael Carabello, Jose “Chepito” Areas, Gregg Rolie, and Carlos Santana.
Tone fiends may have noticed a subtle shift in Santana’s guitar sound on recent albums—darker, beefier, with a bit more grit. For Blessings and Miracles, his return to Dumble amps plays a role in that, but he also notes that—after many years of trying to get his guitar sound on tape accurately—“I’ve been able to get the engineers to open up the depth of field. I always had a tone, but it was a challenge to teach people how to capture it. It’s like photography: You have to open up the aperture to let as much light come in as you need.
“I need four or five microphones on my amp in a room: one in front, one behind, one above, one right on the speaker, and one as far away as possible,” he explains. “I go to each microphone and subtly adjust the position until I get it right. I learned how to record guitars from Jim Gaines and some other engineers and producers. If someone doesn’t know how to record electric guitar, it can sound shrill, metallic … it hurts your teeth. My sound needs to sound like Pavarotti and Placido Domingo—chest tones, head tones, four or five different tones in one note.”
Rig Rundown - Carlos Santana
In January, February, and May, it’ll be possible to hear those tones live in Las Vegas, of all places, where the Santana band started a residency at the House of Blues last year. (His December dates where cancelled for an unanticipated heart procedure.) “Thirty years ago, I would never consider playing a place like Las Vegas or Broadway,” says Santana, who has always been highly vocal about his music-over-showbiz aesthetic. “I was ignorant and afraid if I did something like this I would become predictable, mundane, and boring. I didn’t realize that I could play anywhere repeatedly—without having to move the amps and realign the sound for the stage and the room—and use it as a laboratory, which is what I’ve been doing. I know people come from Australia or Paris to hear certain songs, and I’m going to play something they relate to, like ‘Black Magic Woman’ or ‘Maria Maria,’ but in the middle of the set I’m going into the unknown. I can change the tempo, the melody … play anything.
“I was doing an interview with a guitar magazine and they asked, ‘What do you practice the most?’ I said, ‘Learning to dive into totality, absoluteness, and infinity in one note.’ That way everything can be fresh and new every time you play it. How do you learn to do that? Well, you have to learn to meditate, even while you’re playing. When I hear Metallica, I can feel their collective energy. Collective energy is like supreme meditation. That’s also what I love about Sonny Sharrock. [Santana has a Sharrock tribute album in the works.] At this point in my life, when people say, ‘What’s on your mind?’ I say, ‘Nothing, thank god.’ Because that’s when you play your best.”
My sound needs to sound like Pavarotti and Placido Domingo—chest tones, head tones, four or five different tones in one note.
Actually, there are a few things on Santana’s mind—or at least within his intentions. He says that over the next six months he’d like to learn how to surf, and how to cook bouillabaisse. He’s also enjoying the work of his Milagro Foundation, a non-profit that strives to help children through health care, education, and the arts. Profits from the Carlos Santana Coffee Company, which launched in 2020, goes to Milagro’s work, which is currently focused on clean water for Native Americans living on reservations.
Santana’s own life is perhaps one of the greatest success stories in rock: A poor kid from Mexico falls in love with music and immigrates to the U.S. to chase his muse, and finds more struggle—a bout with tuberculosis, racial discrimination, a language barrier, continued poverty. And then even more struggle, trying to find his place in the rock world, seeking balance in the spiritual dimension with guru Sri Chinmoy, and ultimately becoming a superstar and an éminence grise of guitar. More important, he seems like a joyful man living a life of decency and depth. Which prompts the question: What makes him truly happy?
Carlos Santana circa 1987—the year the band released Freedom and Santana issued his solo album Blues for Salvador, dedicated to his son. The latter yielded Santana’s first Grammy, for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.
“Knowing that I am worthy of my own life of grace,” he says, “and knowing that sometimes when the phone rings, it’s going to be Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, or, in the past, Miles Davis … musicians at that level, calling to say hello and see how I’m doing. That makes me happy being Carlos. He’s quite a guy.
“One of the most important things John Coltrane said is, ‘One positive thought creates millions of positive vibrations.’ You don’t have to be a musician to understand that. It’s inviting you to be miraculous. I talk about this all the time with Eric Clapton and Derek Trucks. Just the way you walk onstage before you grab the guitar can bring hope and courage. You can make a difference. I say to people, ‘You can make the impossible tangible.’ And they say, ‘You’ve been smoking too much pot.’ And I say, ‘Maybe you need to smoke a joint?’”
He continues: “How do you get into a solo that’s in the same place Charlie Parker, Beethoven, or Stravinsky would go to? We can get to that same place. It’s called The Sanctum-of-My-Intelligence Hang-Out. People say to me, ‘That’s far-out, dude! How do I get there?’ Practice removing your mind from the room and allow your light-spirit and soul to create music outside of gravity and time. You have to get out of the cage and dive into the unknown and the unpredictable.”
Santana - Soul Sacrifice Live (Original Líne Up) | Santana IV
See Carlos Santana—gold-leaf-finished PRS in hand—evoke the spirits of tone on the classic “Soul Sacrifice” at the Las Vegas House of Blues with members of the Santana band’s classic line up, including vocalist/organist Greg Rolie and drummer Michael Shrieve.
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Stevie Van Zandt with “Number One,” the ’80s reissue Stratocaster—with custom paisley pickguard from luthier Dave Petillo—that he’s been playing for the last quarter century or so.
With the E Street Band, he’s served as musical consigliere to Bruce Springsteen for most of his musical life. And although he stands next to the Boss onstage, guitar in hand, he’s remained mostly quiet about his work as a player—until now.
I’m stuck in Stevie Van Zandt’s elevator, and the New York City Fire Department has been summoned. It’s early March, and I am trapped on the top floor of a six-story office building in Greenwich Village. On the other side of this intransigent door is Van Zandt’s recording studio, his guitars, amps, and other instruments, his Wicked Cool Records offices, and his man cave. The latter is filled with so much day-glo baby boomer memorabilia that it’s like being dropped into a Milton Glaser-themed fantasy land—a bright, candy-colored chandelier swings into the room from the skylight.
There’s a life-size cameo of a go-go dancer in banana yellow; she’s frozen in mid hip shimmy. One wall displays rock posters and B-movie key art, anchored by a 3D rendering of Cream’s Disraeli Gearsalbum cover that swishes and undulates as you walk past it. Van Zandt’s shelves are stuffed with countless DVDs, from Louis Prima to the J. Geils Band performing on the German TV concert seriesRockpalast. There are three copies ofIggy and the Stooges: Live in Detroit. Videos of the great ’60s-music TV showcases, from Hullabaloo to Dean Martin’s The Hollywood Palace, sit here. Hundreds of books about rock ’n’ roll, from Greil Marcus’s entire output to Nicholas Schaffner’s seminal tome, The Beatles Forever, form a library in the next room.
But I haven’t seen this yet because the elevator is dead, and I am in it. Our trap is tiny, about 5' by 5'. A dolly filled with television production equipment is beside me. There’s a production assistant whom I’ve never met until this morning and another person who’s brand new to me, too, Geoff Sanoff. It turns out that he’s Van Zandt’s engineer—the guy who runs this studio. And as I’ll discover shortly, he’s also one of the several sentinels who watch over Stevie Van Zandt’s guitars.
There’s nothing to do now but wait for the NYFD, so Sanoff and I get acquainted. We discover we’re both from D.C. and know some of the same people in Washington’s music scene. We talk about gear. We talk about this television project. I’m here today assisting an old pal, director Erik Nelson, best known for producing Werner Herzog’s most popular documentaries, like Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Van Zandt has agreed to participate in a television pilot about the British Invasion. After about half an hour, the elevator doors suddenly slide open, and we’re rescued, standing face-to-face with three New York City firefighters.
As our camera team sets up the gear, Sanoff beckons me to a closet off the studio’s control room. I get the sense I am about to get a consolation prize for standing trapped in an elevator for the last 30 minutes. He pulls a guitar case off the shelf—it’s stenciled in paint with the words “Little Steven” on its top—snaps open the latches, and instantly I am face to face with Van Zandt’s well-worn 1957 Stratocaster. Sanoff hands it to me, and I’m suddenly holding what may as well be the thunderbolt of Zeus for an E Street Band fan. My jaw drops when he lets me plug it in so he can get some levels on his board, and the clean, snappy quack of the nearly 70-year-old pickups fills the studio. For decades, Springsteen nuts have enjoyed a legendary 1978 filmed performance of “Rosalita” from Phoenix, Arizona, that now lives on YouTube. This is the Stratocaster Van Zandt had slung over his shoulder that night. It’s the same guitar he wields in the famous No Nukes concert film shot at Madison Square Garden a year later, in 1979. My mind races. The British Invasion is all well and essential. But now I’m thinking about Van Zandt’s relationship with his guitars.
Stevie Van Zandt's Gear
Van Zandt’s guitar concierge Andy Babiuk helped him plunge deeper down the Rickenbacker rabbit hole. Currently, Van Zandt has six Rickenbackers backstage: two 6-strings and four 12-strings.
Guitars
- 1957 Fender Stratocaster (studio only)
- ’80s Fender ’57 Stratocaster reissue “Number One”
- Gretsch Tennessean
- 1955 Gibson Les Paul Custom “Black Beauty” (studio only)
- Rickenbacker Fab Gear 2024 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Model (candy apple green)
- Rickenbacker Fab Gear 2023 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Model (snowglo)
- Rickenbacker 2018 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Fab Gear (jetglo)
- Two Rickenbacker 1993Plus 12-strings (candy apple purple and SVZ blue)
- Rickenbacker 360/12C63 12-string (fireglo)
- Vox Teardrop (owned by Andy Babiuk)
Amps
- Two Vox AC30s
- Two Vox 2x12 cabinets
Effects
- Boss Space Echo
- Boss Tremolo
- Boss Rotary Ensemble
- Durham Electronics Sex Drive
- Durham Electronics Mucho Busto
- Durham Electronics Zia Drive
- Electro-Harmonix Satisfaction
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- Voodoo Labs Ground Control Pro switcher
Strings and Picks
- D’Addario (.095–.44)
- D’Andrea Heavy
Van Zandt has reached a stage of reflection in his career. Besides the Grammy-nominated HBO film, Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple, which came out in 2024, he recently wrote and published his autobiography, Unrequited Infatuations (2021), a rollicking read in which he pulls no punches and makes clear he still strives to do meaningful things in music and life.
His laurels would weigh him down if they were actually wrapped around his neck. In the E Street Band, Van Zandt has participated in arguably the most incredible live group in rock ’n’ roll history. And don’t forget Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes or Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul. He created both the Underground Garage and Outlaw Country radio channels on Sirius/XM. He started a music curriculum program called TeachRock that provides no-cost resources and other programs to schools across the country. Then there’s the politics. Via his 1985 record, Sun City, Van Zandt is credited with blasting many of the load-bearing bricks that brought the walls of South African apartheid tumbling into dust. He also acted in arguably the greatest television drama in American history, with his turn as Silvio Dante in The Sopranos.
Puzzlingly, Van Zandt’s autobiography lacks any detail on his relationship with the electric guitar. And Sanoff warns me that Van Zandt is “not a gearhead.” Instead he has an organization in place to keep his guitar life spinning like plates on the end of pointed sticks. Besides Sanoff, there are three others: Ben Newberry has been Van Zandt’s guitar tech since the beginning of 1982. Andy Babiuk, owner of Rochester, New York, guitar shop Fab Gear and author of essential collector reference books Beatles Gear and Rolling Stones Gear (the latter co-authored by Greg Prevost) functions as Van Zandt’s guitar concierge. Lastly, luthier Dave Petillo, based in Asbury Park, New Jersey, oversees all the maintenance and customization on Van Zandt’s axes.
“I took one lesson, and they start to teach you the notes. I don’t care about the notes.” —Stevie Van Zandt
I crawl onto Zoom with Van Zandt for a marathon session and come away from our 90 minutes with the sense that he is a man of dichotomies. Sure, he’s a guitar slinger, but he considers his biggest strengths to be as an arranger, producer, and songwriter. “I don’t feel that being a guitar player is my identity,” he tells me. “For 40 years, ever since I made my first solo record, I just have not felt that I express myself as a guitar player. I still enjoy it when I do it; I’m not ambivalent. When I play a solo, I am in all the way, and I play a solo like I would like to hear if I were in the audience. But the guitar part is really part of the song’s arrangement. And a great solo is a composed solo. Great solos are ones you can sing, like Jimi Hendrix’s solo in ‘All Along the Watchtower.’”
In his autobiography, Van Zandt mentions that his first guitar was an acoustic belonging to his grandfather. “I took one lesson, and they start to teach you the notes. I don’t care about the notes,” Van Zandt tells me. “The teacher said I had natural ability. I’m thinking, if I got natural ability, then what the fuck do I need you for? So I never went back. After that, I got my first electric, an Epiphone. It was about slowing down the records to figure out with my ear what they were doing. It was seeing live bands and standing in front of that guitar player and watching what they were doing. It was praying when a band went on TV that the cameraman would occasionally go to the right place and show what the guitar player was doing instead of putting the camera on the lead singer all the time. And I’m sure it was the same for everybody. There was no concept of rock ’n’ roll lessons. School of Rock wouldn’t exist for another 30 years. So, you had to go to school yourself.”
By the end of the 1960s, Van Zandt tells me he had made a conscious decision about what kind of player he wanted to be. “I realized that I really wasn’t that interested in becoming a virtuoso guitar player, per se. I was more interested in making sure I could play the guitar solo that would complement the song. I got more into the songs than the nature of musicianship.”
After the Beatles and the Stones broke the British Invasion wide open, bands like Cream and the Yardbirds most influenced him. “George Harrison would have that perfect 22-second guitar solo,” Van Zandt remembers. “Keith Richards. Dave Davies. Then, the harder stuff started coming. Jeff Beck in the Yardbirds. Eric Clapton with things like ‘White Room.’ But the songs stayed in a pop configuration, three minutes each or so. You’d have this cool guitar-based song with a 15-second, really amazing Jeff Beck solo in it. That’s what I liked. Later, the jam bands came, but I was not into that. My attention deficit disorder was not working for the longer solos,” he jokes. Watch a YouTube video of any recent E Street Band performance where Van Zandt solos, and the punch and impact of his approach and attack are apparent. At Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., last year, his solo on “Rosalita” was 13 powerful seconds.
Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen’s relationship goes back to their earliest days on the Jersey shore. “Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity,” recalls Van Zandt. “At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to Telecaster. At that point, I was ready to switch to Stratocaster.”
Photo by Pamela Springsteen
Van Zandt left his Epiphone behind for his first Fender. “I started to notice that the guitar superstars at the time were playing Telecasters. Mike Bloomfield. Jeff Beck. Even Eric Clapton played one for a while,” he tells me. “I went down to Jack’s Music Shop in Red Bank, New Jersey, because he had the first Telecaster in our area and couldn’t sell it; it was just sitting there. I bought it for 90 bucks.”
In those days, and around those parts, players only had one guitar. Van Zandt recalls, “Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity. At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to Telecaster. At that point, I was ready to switch to Stratocaster, because Jimi Hendrix had come in and Jeff Beck had switched to a Strat. They all kind of went from Telecaster to Les Pauls. And then some of them went on to the Stratocaster. For me, the Les Paul was just too out of reach. It was too expensive, and it was just too heavy. So I said, I’m going to switch to a Stratocaster. It felt a little bit more versatile.”
Van Zandt still employs Stratocasters, and besides the 1957 I strummed, he was seen with several throughout the ’80s and ’90s. But for the last 20 or 25 years, Van Zandt has mainly wielded a black Fender ’57 Strat reissue from the ’80s with a maple fretboard and a gray pearloid pickguard. He still uses that Strat—dubbed “Number One”—but the pickguard has been switched to one sporting a purple paisley pattern that was custom-made by Dave Petillo.
Petillo comes from New Jersey luthier royalty and followed in the footsteps of his late father, Phil Petillo. At a young age, the elder Petillo became an apprentice to legendary New York builder John D’Angelico. Later, he sold Bruce Springsteen the iconic Fender Esquire that’s seen on the Born to Run album cover and maintained and modified that guitar and all of Bruce’s other axes until he passed away in 2010. Phil worked out of a studio in the basement of their home, not far from Asbury Park. Artists dropped in, and Petillo has childhood memories of playing pick-up basketball games in his backyard with members of the E Street Band. (He also recalls showing his Lincoln Logs to Johnny Cash and once mistaking Jerry Garcia for Santa Claus.)
“I was more interested in making sure I could play the guitar solo that would complement the song. I got more into the songs than the nature of musicianship.” —Stevie Van Zandt
“I’ve known Stevie Van Zandt my whole life,” says Petillo. “My dad used to work on his 1957 Strat. That guitar today has updated tuners, a bone nut, new string trees, and a refret that was done by Dad long ago. I think one volume pot may have been changed. But it still has the original pickups.” Petillo is responsible for a lot of the aesthetic flair seen on Van Zandt’s instruments. He continues, “Stevie is so much fun to work with. I love incorporating colors into things, and Stevie gets that. When you talk to a traditional Telecaster or Strat player, and you say, ‘I want to do a tulip paisley pickguard in neon blue-green,’ they’re like, ‘Holy cow, that’s too much!’ But for Stevie, it’s just natural. So I always text him with pickguard designs, asking him, ‘Which one do you like?’ And he calls me a wild man; he says, ‘I don’t have that many Strats to put them on!’ But I’ll go to Ben Newberry and say, ‘Ben, I made these pickguards; let’s get them on the guitar. And I’ll go backstage, and we’ll put them on. I just love that relationship; Stevie is down for it.”
Petillo takes care of the electronics on Van Zandt’s guitars. Almost all of the Strats are modified with an internal Alembic Stratoblaster preamp circuit, which Van Zandt can physically toggle on and off using a switch housed just above the input jack. Van Zandt tells me, “That came because I got annoyed with the whole pedal thing. I’m a performer onstage, and I’m integrated with the audience and I like the freedom to move. And if I’m across the stage and all of a sudden Bruce nods to me to take a solo, or there’s a bit in the song that requires a little bit of distortion, it’s just easier to have that; sometimes, I’ll need that extra little boost for a part I’m throwing in, and it’s convenient.”
In recent times, Van Zandt has branched out from the Stratocaster, which has a lot to do with Andy Babiuk's influence. The two met 20 years ago, and Babiuk’s band, the Chesterfield Kings, is on Van Zandt’s Wicked Cool Records. “He’d call me up and ask me things like, ‘What’s Brian Jones using on this song?’” explains Babiuk. “When I’d ask him why, he’d tell me, ‘Because I want to have that guitar.’ It’s a common thing for me to get calls and texts from him like that. And there’s something many people overlook that Stevie doesn’t advertise: He’s a ripping guitar player. People think of him as playing chords and singing backup for Bruce, but the guy rips. And not just on guitar, on multiple instruments.”
Van Zandt tells me he wanted to bring more 12-string to the E Street Band this tour, “just to kind of differentiate the tone.” He explains, “Nils is doing his thing, and Bruce is doing his thing, and I wanted to do more 12-string.” He laughs, “I went full Paul Kantner!” Babiuk helped Van Zandt plunge deeper down the Rickenbacker rabbit hole. Currently, Van Zandt has six Rickenbackers backstage: two 6-strings and four 12-strings. Each 12-string has a modified nut made by Petillo from ancient woolly mammoth tusk, and the D, A, and low E strings are inverted with their octave.
Van Zandt explains this to me: “I find that the strings ring better when the high ones are on top. I’m not sure if that’s how Roger McGuinn did it, but it works for me. I’m also playing a wider neck.”
Babiuk tells me about a unique Rick in Van Zandt’s rack of axes: “I know the guys at Rickenbacker well, and they did a run of 30 basses in candy apple purple for my shop. I showed one to Stevie, and purple is his color; he loves it. He asked me to get him a 12-string in the same color, and I told him, ‘They don’t do one-offs; they don’t have a custom shop,’ but it’s hard to say no to the guy! So I called Rickenbacker and talked them into it. I explained, ‘He’ll play it a lot on this upcoming tour.’ They made him a beautiful one with his OM logo.”
The purple one-off is a 1993Plus model and sports a 1 3/4" wide neck—1/8" wider than a normal Rickenbacker. Van Zandt loved it so much that he had Babiuk wrestle with Rickenbacker again to build another one in baby blue. Petillo has since outfitted them with paisley-festooned custom pickguards. When guitar tech Newberry shows me these unique axes backstage, I can see the input jack on the purple guitar is labeled with serial number 01001.“Some of my drive is based on gratitude,” says Van Zandt, “feeling like we are the luckiest guys in the luckiest generation ever.”
Photo by Rob DeMartin
Van Zandt also currently plays a white Vox Teardrop. That guitar is a prototype owned by Babiuk. “Stevie wanted a Teardrop,” Babiuk tells me, “but I explained that the vintage ones are hit and miss—the ones made in the U.K. were often better than the ones manufactured in Italy. Korg now owns Vox, and I have a new Teardrop prototype from them in my personal collection. When I showed it to him, he loved it and asked me to get him one. I had to tell him, ‘I can’t; it’s a prototype, there’s only one,’ and he asked me to sell him mine,” he chuckles. “I told him, ‘It’s my fucking personal guitar, it’s not for sale!’ So I ended up lending it to him for this tour, and I told him, ‘Remember, this is my guitar; don’t get too happy with it, okay?’
“He asked me why that particular guitar sounds and feels so good. Besides being a prototype built by only one guy, the single-coil pickups’ output is abnormally hot, and the neck feels like a nice ’60s Fender neck. Stevie’s obviously a dear friend of mine, and he can hold onto it for as long as he wants. I’m glad it’s getting played. It was just hanging in my office.”
Van Zandt tells me how Babiuk’s Vox Teardrop sums up everything he wants from his tone, and says, “It’s got a wonderfully clean, powerful sound. Like Brian Jones got on ‘The Last Time.’ That’s my whole thing; that’s the trick—trying to get the power without too much distortion. Bruce and Nils get plenty of distortion; I am trying to be the clean rhythm guitar all the time.”
If Van Zandt has a consigliere like Tony Soprano had Silvio Dante, that’s Newberry. Newberry has tech’d nearly every gig with Van Zandt since 1982. “Bruce shows move fast,” he tells me. “So when there’s a guitar change for Stevie, and there are many of them, I’m at the top of the stairs, and we switch quickly. There’s maybe one or two seconds, and if he needs to tell me something, I hear it. He’s Bruce’s musical director, so he may say something like, ‘Remind me tomorrow to go over the background vocals on “Ghosts,”’ or something like that. And I take notes during the show.”
“Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity. At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to a Telecaster.” —Stevie Van Zandt
When I ask Newberry how he defines Van Zandt’s relationship to the guitar, he doesn’t hesitate, snapping back, “It’s all in his head. His playing is encyclopedic, whether it’s Bruce or anything else. He may show up at soundcheck and start playing the Byrds, but it’s not ‘Tambourine Man,’ it’s something obscure like ‘Bells of Rhymney.’ People may not get it, but I’ve known him long enough to know what’s happening. He’s got everything already under his fingers. Everything.”
As such, Van Zandt says he never practices. “The only time I touch a guitar between tours is if I’m writing something or maybe arranging backing vocal harmonies on a production,” he tells me.
Before we say goodbye, I tell Van Zandt about my time stuck in his elevator, and his broad grin signals that I may not be the only one to have suffered that particular purgatory. When I ask him about the 1957 Stratocaster I got to play upon my release, he recalls: “Bruce Springsteen gave me that guitar. I’ve only ever had one guitar stolen in my life, and it was in the very early days of my joining the E Street Band. I only joined temporarily for what I thought would be about seven gigs, and in those two weeks or so, my Stratocaster was stolen. It was a 1957 or 1958. Bruce felt bad about that and replaced that lost guitar with this one. So I’ve had it a long, long time. Once that first one was stolen, I decided I would resist having a personal relationship with any one guitar. But that one being a gift from Bruce makes it special. I will never take it back on the road.”
After 50 years of rock ’n’ roll, if there is one word to sum up Stevie Van Zandt, it may be “restless”—an adjective you sense from reading his autobiography. He gets serious and tells me, “I’m always trying to catch up. The beginning of accomplishing something came quite late to me. I feel like I haven’t done nearly enough. What are we on this planet trying to do?” he asks rhetorically. “We’re trying to realize our potential and maybe leave this place one percent better for the next guy. And some of my drive is based on gratitude, feeling like we are the luckiest guys in the luckiest generation ever. That’s what I’m doing: I want to give something back. I feel an obligation.”
YouTube It
“Rosalita” is a perennial E Street Band showstopper. Here’s a close-up video from Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park last summer. Van Zandt’s brief but commanding guitar spotlight shines just past the 4:30 mark.
Follow along as we build a one-of-a-kind Strat featuring top-notch components, modern upgrades, and classic vibes. Plus, see how a vintage neck stacks up against a modern one in our tone test. Watch the demo and enter for your chance to win this custom guitar!
With over 350 effects models, 120 sampling slots, and a Groove Station with a 480-second looper, this pedal offers unparalleled versatility for guitarists worldwide.
In 2025, MOOER has announced that it will be set to release its latest multi-effects pedal, the GS1000 Intelligent Amp Profiling Processor, an augmented intelligent amp profiling processor. Built on MOOER’s advanced third-generation digital platform, the GS1000 introduces groundbreaking MNRS 2.0 technology, allowing guitarists around the world to emulate their favorite gear with immense precision–specifically, for distortion pedals, preamps, amplifier heads, and cabinets.
With this innovation, guitarists can fully capture the essence of their favorite guitar gear without owning the physical hardware, enabling them to carry their favorite tones wherever they go. Users are even able to use third-party IRs for cabinets of their choice, further enhancing the flexibility of this feature.
It’s unforgettable how much MOOER’s multi-effects pedals have impressed audiences so far, primarily thanks to their robust tone libraries. However, even still, the GS1000 continues to build upon this with storage for up to 120 sampling profiles, along with continued integration with the MOOER Cloud app. Essentially, this cloud integration facilitates infinite upload and download possibilities, giving users access to a global community of shared tones, widely expanding the number of accessible tones. More still, the GS1000’s previously mentioned third-party IR cabinet simulations support up to 2048 sample points, guaranteeing studio-grade tonal accuracy across the board.
Even more impressive for the price is how the GS1000 inherits the dual-chain effects architecture that made previous MOOER gear so versatile, making it suitable for highly complex usage scenarios. With over 350 factory effects models and a Sub-Patch preset grouping mode, the GS1000 makes it far simpler for users to make seamless transitions between tones, all while maintaining effect tails to guarantee seamless transitions. Additionally, the reintroduction of the innovative AI-driven EQ Master builds upon MOOER devices’ previous capabilities, using intelligent adjustments in real-time to match the musical style of players to tones, while still allowing manual tweaks for precise control.
Impressively, the GS1000 also comes packed with a Groove Station module, consisting of a combination of drum machine and looper features–including 56 high-quality drum kits! It offers a 480-second phrase looper with infinite overdubs, automated detection, and synchronization capabilities, resulting in an intuitive platform for solo jamming, composition, and live loop-based performance. Overall, the Groove Station acts as an all-in-one suite for creating full arrangements, without having to depend on additional backing tracks or bandmates.
Visually and functionally, the GS1000 really stands out thanks to its sleek visual design and enhanced user experience. For example, it features a convenient 5-inch high-resolution touchscreen, which is also paired with ambient lighting to add a visually stunning element to the pedal. As a result, the GS1000 is not only designed for convenient touch-based control but also as a standout centerpiece in any guitar rig.
In addition to this touchscreen control system, the GS1000 also provides expanded connectivity options, improving upon the already impressive flexibility of past pedals. Most notably, it supports connectivity with the MOOER F4 wireless footswitch, as well as the ability to control presets via external MIDI devices.
As is expected from MOOER these days, the GS1000 also excels when it comes to routing opportunities, going above and beyond the typical stereo ¼” inputs and outputs that would be expected from other brands. Yes, it still includes such staples, but it also includes an XLRmicrophone input, alongside balanced TRS outputs for long-distance signal clarity. The configurable serial/parallel stereo effects loop enables seamless integration of external effects, and the addition of Bluetooth audio input and MIDI compatibility broadens its wide range of use cases for live and practice-based applications.
Furthermore, the pedal also serves as a professional audio solution thanks to its low-latency 2-in/2-out ASIO USB sound card. Supporting up to 192kHz sampling rates, the GS1000 makes recording and live streaming effortless, as it can easily be used with software DAWs, MOOER’s editing software, as well as the USB-based MIDI control.
The GS1000 will be available in two versions–the standard white edition, which is powered by mains power, and the GS1000 Li version, which introduces a 7.4V 4750mAh lithium battery, chargeable through its power port. With this upgrade, users can enjoy up to six hours of continuous power-free playtime, making it ideal for practicing, busking, and generally performing on the go.
Overall, for fans of MOOER’s previous amp simulation offerings, the GS1000 represents a natural evolution, building on everything that made its predecessors great while introducing cutting-edge features and expanded capabilities. Most importantly, MOOER has promised to continuously update its MOOER 4.0 tonal algorithms on the MOOER Cloud in line with therelease, keeping things fresh for the company’s dedicated user base.
- MNRS 2.0 sampling technology for emulating distortion pedals, preamps, amplifier heads, and cabinets
- Over 350 original factory effects models
- 120 sampling slots with upload/download support via the MOOER Cloud app
- Supports third-party cabinet IR files up to 2048 sample points
- Integrated Groove Station with a drum machine and 480-second looper, featuring infinite overdubs and synchronization capabilities
- 54 high-quality drum kits
- 4 metronome tones
- Tap-tempo control for timing effects
- Advanced AI-driven EQ Master for intelligent tone adjustment based on music styles, with manual customization options
- Built-in high-precision digital tuner
- Quick-access dual-chain effects architecture for seamless creative workflows
- 5-inch high-resolution touchscreen with ambient lighting for enhanced usability
- Four multi-purpose footswitches
- Configurable serial/parallel TRS stereo effects loop for external effects integration
- 6.35mm instrument input and XLR microphone input for expanded connectivity
- Balanced TRS stereo outputs for long-distance signal transmission without quality loss
- Bluetooth audio input functionality for accompaniment playback
- Low-latency ASIO 2-in/2-out USB sound card supporting up to 192kHz sampling rate
- MIDI controller compatibility for managing presets and features
- USB-C port for preset management, USB audio, and USB MIDI functionality
- Supports MOOER F4 wireless footswitch for extended control
- Also available as the GS1000 Li, which features a built-in 7.4V 4750mAh lithium battery, offering up to 6 hours of continuous playtime, chargeable through the power port
The GS1000 will be available from the official distributors and retailers worldwide on January 16th, 2025.
For more information, please visit mooeraudio.com.
Hand-crafted in Petaluma, California, this amp features upgrades while maintaining the original's legendary tone.
The Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier Solo Head’s arrival in 1992 was a watershed moment for alternative rock and metal that changed everything; heavy music would never sound the same again, and the Dual Rectifier’s crushing, harmonically rich tone became the most sought-after guitar sound of the era. With a feel as empowering as its sound, the Rectifiers provided an ease of playing that supported and elevated proficiency and was inspirational, rewarding, and addictive.
Its sound and impact on the generation that used it to define what rock music would become were as sweeping as they have been lasting. And it remains arguably the most modeled in today’s digital amp landscape. Now, the 90s Dual Rectifier is back with a vengeance, built in Petaluma, California, by the same artisans who made the originals the most desirable high-gain guitar amplifier of all time.
For more information, please visit mesaboogie.com.