
This photo of Yola with her replica of Sister Rosetta’s 1961 SG Custom was taken just hours before she hit the red carpet for the 64th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony on April 3, 2022. Yola was nominated for Best Americana Album (Stand for Myself) and Best American Roots Song (“Diamond Studded Shoes”).
From the Grammy-nominated Stand for Myself to her role in the upcoming Elvis biopic, powerhouse singer-songwriter Yola affirms the mother of rock ’n’ roll’s place in history while claiming her own space, guitar in hand.
“I have this love affair with the ’70s—this gray area of music where one genre talks to another,” proclaims six-time Grammy nominee Yola. “That gave rise to loads of bands we would find hard to place nowadays, like Parliament-Funkadelic, Minnie Riperton, and Rotary Connection. They show how everything has been influenced by something else in the music sphere. It gets us away from this idea of genres, you know? And so that’s something that I consciously want to do. It’s like a mission.”
If Yola’s goal on her most recent release, Stand for Myself, was to meld her musical influences and life experiences into a cohesive, singular approach that craftily defies categorization, then mission accomplished. Songs like “Starlight,” “Diamond Studded Shoes,” and the title track, draw equally on the aforementioned seminal artists that Yola discovered via her mother’s ’70s record collection, as well as the mixtapes she created from listening to the British radio of her youth, which featured everything from ’90s neo-soul to R&B to Britpop. In any given song on Stand for Myself, you can likely identify familiar sonic themes, but when channeled through the lens of Yola’s personal experience, the result is an album that assimilates decades of music with a refreshingly contemporary point of view.
“I needed to take this concept of inaccessibility and patriarchy and whitewashing that were bestowed upon the legacy of rock ’n’ roll post-Sister Rosetta and undo that process.”
Yola was born Yolanda Claire Quartey in 1983 in Bristol, England. She first cut her teeth in the U.K. as a lead vocalist and songwriter with bands like Phantom Limb, Massive Attack, and Bugz in the Attic. She subsequently worked as a top-line writer, creating lyrics and melodies for artists like Will Young, Chase & Status, and Katy Perry. Her powerhouse vocals have even been sampled by the Chemical Brothers and Iggy Azalea. Her 2019 debut, Walk Through Fire, received widespread acclaim from Rolling Stone and The New York Times, which praised her “genre-fluid” blending of sounds, from “vintage Southern soul” to the “early-1960s pop melodramas of the Righteous Brothers and Roy Orbison.” That album earned Yola four Grammy award nominations, including Best New Artist. With Stand for Myself, she earned two more Grammy nominations, for Best Americana Album and for Best American Roots Song for “Diamond Studded Shoes.”
Sonically, Yola arrived at the musical medley that is Stand for Myself through what she calls a “process of metabolizing your influences.” She describes it as bringing oneself to the artistic table. “No one’s going to be able to replicate your perception of reality,” explains Yola. “Honestly, the only new thing that really exists in that matrix of your experience is you. And what’s really important to do in music as an artist is to find how you interject yourself into the process of being artistic, so by the time you bring your influences back out into the world, they aren’t what they were when they went in. They’ve been changed by being seen, and heard, and appreciated by you.”
Yola - "Stand For Myself" [Official Music Video]
To that point, Yola’s songs on Stand for Myself lyrically explore deeply personal themes that are often informed by her own research on the paradigm of supremacy, and instances of bigotry and racism that have deeply impacted her life and career. She now finds herself poised to help fulfill part of an incomplete narrative that includes what she calls “the whitewashing of the influence of Black women in the birth of rock and roll” via her portrayal of Sister Rosetta Tharpe in Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming Elvis biopic. “You don’t get a whole rounded story of Elvis without telling the actual truth,” she asserts. “And the truth is way more interesting and complicated than the narrative that is thrown at us by white male rockdom.”
The soundtrack for Elvis was recorded at RCA Studio A with producer Dave Cobb (Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, Slash) in Nashville. “Principally, they recognized that I had experience doing voiceover for music sample replay for about 15 years, which was exactly the skill set that was required,” Yola explains. Combined with burgeoning guitar chops, she was essentially a shoo-in for the role of Tharpe, except that she’d never soloed before. “I had to do my first solos ever on camera, which is just ridiculous to think,” she laughs. The audio production team on Elvis sent her slowed down versions of the songs so she could learn Sister Rosetta’s solos by ear. “Everything I do is by ear,” Yola says. She would sing the melody of the solo, and then the production team would let her know “where they thought it was on the neck” that Sister Rosetta was playing. For the film, Gibson sent her a replica of Sister Rosetta’s 1961 SG Custom.
Yola’s Stand for Myself was released in 2021 and recorded at Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound Studio in Nashville. The album was nominated for Best Americana Album at the 2022 Grammy Awards.
Yola says the bigger challenge, however, was singing counter to the rhythm of what her fingers were doing with the guitar. “She [Sister Rosetta] was always kind of dovetailing a solo while she was singing, and then she’d stop singing and do another solo,” explains Yola. “But she’d already been noodling right across her vocals. So, I had to get good at rubbing my tummy and patting my head.” It took time, and it took “some tuition,” she says, with help from composer Elliott Wheeler, production designer Catherine Martin, and movement coach Polly Bennett—all of whom “pretty much ferried me from this rhythm player who sings and writes songs to this kind of shredder.”
“The idea is to disable my prefrontal cortex—that excessive analytical thinking that one might believe is what we write with.”
Apparently, the production team did have the option for a hand double, but Yola says it was important that she play the actual guitar solos herself. “I needed to take this concept of inaccessibility and patriarchy and whitewashing that were bestowed upon the legacy of rock ’n’ roll post-Sister Rosetta and undo that process,” she declares. “The programming is absolute—it’s very effective and it doesn’t help tell the truth at all.” Yola calls the absence of Sister Rosetta in most rock ’n’ roll history books “problematic,” and that it became important for her to present to the world the context in which they understand the legacy of rock ’n’ roll. “She was the first person to distort the guitar and to bend the strings in the way that we now recognize as the blueprint for rock and roll music,” Yola contends. “Without distorting the amp, without the shred, without the tempo and the swing with which she delivered her solos, rock ’n’ roll doesn’t exist.” She hopes her portrayal of Sister Rosetta helps to set the record straight, but perhaps more importantly she’d like her performance to help dismantle the idea of being disenfranchised from the guitar, which is something she says plagued her. “I was told all the time when I was in England that I shouldn’t be anywhere near a guitar.”
Yola’s Gear
On her current headlining tour, Yola plays a Telecaster at Birmingham, Alabama’s Saturn venue on March 20, 2022. Her other go-to electric is a fiesta red Fender Noventa Jazzmaster.
Photo by Josh Weichman
Guitars
- Fender Paramount Series PM-1 Limited Adirondack Dreadnought
- Fender Noventa Jazzmaster
- Fender Custom Shop American Classic Telecaster
- Gibson 1961 SG Custom Reissue (for Sister Rosetta role in Elvis)
- Martin (000-size body)
As for picking up the guitar for her own music, Yola describes her initial impulse, originally by way of a Martin 000-series, as a “low-lift” way of being able to bring fully formed songwriting ideas to the table. “When I was a top-line writer, I’d have an idea, and it would be relatively full and complete in my head, but then I’d try to explain that to somebody and it would become changed unrecognizably, because you don’t know how to do anything other than suggest something. And so [playing guitar] is just the freedom to be able to finish a thought process.” She says it also makes collaboration more straightforward. “You’re able to say, ‘Here’s a bit of an idea. I have a verse and a chorus, but I don’t have a bridge, can you do me one? Here’s the context.’ You’re able to bring something full to the table.” She cites “Stand for Myself” as an example. “I knew that I wanted it to have a bit more of a sus4 feeling,” she recalls. “But I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted it to be repetitive or if I wanted there to be a movement of Dsus4, so I called my friend, Hannah V, and we figured it out.”
Yola generates her own light, posing onstage with her Fender PM-1 electro-acoustic at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium.
Photo by Joseph Ross Smith
Yola says playing guitar became even more essential during the pandemic, when intimate settings, requiring fewer musicians, like her NPR Tiny Desk appearances, started becoming the norm. “If it can hold together relatively stripped down, then it’s probably a good song,” she asserts. “Production is important, but the melodic hooks that are important to the song have to be able to be told on a couple of instruments.” Yola often wields a Fender Paramount Series acoustic guitar during such performances.
“I was told all the time when I was in England that I shouldn’t be anywhere near a guitar.”
As for the actual act of songwriting itself, Yola gravitates towards “motor-skill-forward” activities, like vacuuming, showering, and walking to get into a “hypnotic state.” She also stays up late, watching TV and strumming the guitar idly, going through chord changes. “The idea is to disable my prefrontal cortex—that excessive analytical thinking that one might believe is what we write with.” The “most elegant connections,” she professes, are made without using that part of the brain. “So, I’d try to distract it—the guitar being the thing that jogs the inspiration into the rest of my brain, once I’ve got the prefrontal cortex taken care of.”
Yola says playing guitar is “the freedom to be able to finish a thought process.”
Photo by Katie LaRocca
Circling back around to the Elvis biopic, she again emphasizes the importance of putting Sister Rosetta’s legacy into the context of what we know about the development of rock ’n’ roll. “It’s so people can better understand where the thing they love comes from,” she explains. “Take her discovery of Little Richard. It makes sense that a guy in drag, singing rock ’n’ roll, would be discovered by a queer Black woman, as opposed to a buttoned-up white guy from the ’50s. All of a sudden you go, ‘Well, of course. Now that makes sense [laughter]. How the hell does he survive, otherwise?’ And so, once things start making sense, it then becomes my duty, to the history of rock ’n’ roll, to the history of guitar playing, to the history of women in music, to do the homework, learn the guitar, understand Sister Rosetta’s importance, and hold the guitar aloft as this thing that gives, so much more than it takes, for every human that touches it.”
Yola - Stand For Myself (Live From Easy Eye Sound)
Yola sings her empowering anthem “Stand for Myself” with assistance from her Fender Paramount PM-1 Limited in an intimate performance at Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound Studio in Nashville.
Shout, Sister, Shout! Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Here’s Gibson’s short documentary on the life of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, with a power assist from Celisse Henderson and Amythyst Kiah.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe guitar solos (in motion picture)
Check out this collection of outstanding Rosetta Tharpe guitar solos on film.
Love pedals? So do we! Enter the I Love Pedals giveaway for a chance to win the Ernie Ball VPJR Tuner Pedal in White. Come back daily for more chances!
Ernie Ball VPJR Tuner / Volume Pedal - White
The VPJR Tuner pedal combines Ernie Ball’s world-renowned volume pedal with an enhanced definition digital guitar tuner. In the heel-down position, the pedal’s vibrant touchscreen automatically enters tuner mode, allowing for silent tuning. As the foot sweeps forward, the screen switches to volume mode, providing a graphic display of your volume level. Alternatively, the screen can remain in volume mode or tuner mode, regardless of the pedal’s position in the sweep. Simply double tap on the touchscreen to toggle between modes. The VPJR Tuner provides the same rugged construction and time-tested performance as Ernie Ball’s traditional volume pedal, resulting in the most useful guitar tuner pedal on the market.
Roger Waters is set to release a Super Deluxe Boxset of The Dark Side Of The Moon Redux on March 14, 2025. The Boxset includes a live album from his sold-out London Palladium shows, gold vinyl, CD, Blu-ray, and a track-by-track video interview.
The Super Deluxe Boxset includes:
- The Dark Side Of The Moon Redux on gold vinyl (2LP), CD, Blu-ray: Dolby Atmos Mix, 96/24 Audio.
- The Dark Side Of The Moon Redux Live on gold vinyl, CD, Blu-Ray, 96/24 Audio
- Roger Waters Track by Track video interview on Blu-ray
- Four 4 x 10-inch Vinyl from the original Redux album cut at 45 RPM for: Money, Time, Speak To Me/Breathe and Us & Them, each with an artwork etched B-side.
- A 40 page Commemorative Book of Photographs from The Making of the Album, Rehearsals, and Roger Waters Redux Live at The London Palladium.
- Initial Boxset orders from the official store include a signed print by Roger Waters
Waters Quote:
“All that is gone, all that’s to come? Looking back or looking forward, Dark Side of the Moon offers you choice. The choice is yours. Darkness or the Light”.
Track listing:
The Dark Side Of The Moon Redux studio album and Roger Waters Live album:
“Speak to Me”
“Breathe”
“On the Run”
“Time”
“Great Gig in the Sky”
“Money“
“Us and Them”
“Any Colour You Like”
“Brain Damage”
“Eclipse”
The Dark Side Of The Moon Super Deluxe box set Redux credits include: Roger Waters: Vocals / Gus Seyffert: Bass, Synth, Backing Vocals / Joey Waronker: Drums, Percussion / Jonathan Wilson: Guitars, Synth / Johnny Shepherd: Organ, Vocals / Via Mardot: Theremin, Vocals / Azniv Korkejian: Vocals, Percussion / Jon Carin: Keyboards, Lap Steel, Synths, Organ, Vocals / Robert Walter: Piano, Harpsichord, Synths / Strings: Gabe Noel: String Arrangements: Gabe Noel
Recorded live at The London Palladium // Produced by Gus Seyffert and Roger Waters // Mixed by Sean Sullivan, Darrell Thorpe, Roger Waters and Gus Seyffert // Mastered by Dave Cooley, Elysian Masters // Art Direction and Design: Sean Evans // Photography: Kate Izor.
For more information, please visit rogerwaters.tmstor.es.
Roger Waters - THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON REDUX SUPER DELUXE BOXSET - YouTube
Each night of a G3 tour ends with an all-out jam and on Reunion Live, the trio hits classics by Cream, Hendrix, and Steppenwolf. “When you hear each guy solo, you can hear how we’ve changed through the years,” says Vai.
Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Eric Johnson reflect on their groundbreaking tour with a fiery live album that took nearly 30 years to make.
“When you’re young, you’re attracted to all these [guitar] ideas—do this, do that,” says Eric Johnson. “You’re like a sponge. If you get yourself out of the way, get rid of the ego, and stay open, you remain a student your whole life. But at the same time, you get to the point where you’re like, ‘There’s only so much time, and I don’t need to learn this and that.’ There are things that Joe [Satriani] or Steve [Vai] do that I’ll never be able to do.”
Some guitarists would find that notion depressing—of finally extinguishing the naive youthful fire to master every technique on their instrument. (It’s probably easier to find peace when you’re one of the world’s most revered players, with platinum sales and Grammys on your résumé.) But when Johnson looks at Satriani and Vai, his fellow virtuosos on the 2024 G3 reunion tour, the idea of “letting go” puts a smile on his face.
“Although we stay open, we define some of our journey,” says Johnson. “We can’t be everything to everybody. Then you start appreciating what someone else is doing even more.”
That sense of refinement is crucial to the story of G3, the triple-guitar tour conceived by Satriani and launched alongside Johnson and Vai in 1996. Over the years, the event has morphed to incorporate players from just about every style: from blues-rock (Kenny Wayne Shepherd) to prog-metal (Dream Theater’s John Petrucci) to hard rock (Uli Jon Roth) to the eerie soundscapes of King Crimson’s Robert Fripp. Far from a rote shred-fest, it’s a celebration of the electric guitar’s unlimited possibilities. And Satriani’s been thinking a lot about that idea following the G3 reunion tour, which ran for 13 dates last January, spawned a new concert album (Reunion Live), and will eventually birth a documentary helmed by his son ZZ.Recorded live at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, Reunion Live documents the culmination of a 13-date tour that brought the trio together for the first time since the original tour in 1996.
“He had an interesting idea for a film,” Satriani says. “Our first G3 show happened the week he turned four, and we decided we were always going to take him with us. He wanted to do a film not only about that and about G3 but also his whole point of view growing up with a very strange father and this community of guitar players. He wanted to know their perspective on guitar playing and music and this life he’s been a part of.”
The younger Satriani grew even more ambitious, proposing that the OG G3s [OG3s?] get together for another tour. “ZZ wanted to see what it was really like, after decades of traveling with me and the different bands, to get onstage and play,” Satch says. “It all sort of happened in those last two shows at the Orpheum in Los Angeles. ZZ came on and played a song, and that sort of brought the film full-circle—from the four-year-old to the 32-year-old playing onstage with his dad. The [as-yet-unreleased] film has really developed into this epic story about guitar players. Eric and Steve have been so generous with their time, letting ZZ interview them about music, guitar, and what it means to them. But that’s really how the whole thing got started this time around.”
“30 years later, you can really see more of the dynamic difference in our go-to notes and riffs. Joe is more Joe now; Eric is more Eric now; and I’m more me now.”—Steve Vai
Reunion Live unfolds like the actual G3 shows, with miniature heavy-hitter sets from each artist (you get Vai’s “For the Love of God,” Satriani’s “Surfing With the Alien,” Johnson’s “Desert Rose”), followed by a trio of generous, triple-guitar cover-song jams—in this case, ripping versions of Robert Johnson’s blues staple “Crossroads,” Steppenwolf’s open-road proto-metal anthem “Born to Be Wild,” and Jimi Hendrix’s hard-psych powerhouse “Spanish Castle Magic.” The latter, fronted by Johnson, is the album’s centerpiece: 11-plus minutes of instrumental fireworks that perfectly showcase each player’s distinct flavor. Toward the end, the groove lays back into a quiet, funky simmer—the perfect platform for an onslaught of tasteful flourishes and ungodly shredding.
Back in 1996, the trio barnstormed across the country and laid waste to guitar nerds everywhere with a scorching version of Zappa’s “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama.”
Photo by Ebet Roberts
“The thing I liked about that [choice] was that it’s very common to play a Hendrix song in a jam, but most people play the usual suspects,” says Vai. “Eric’s Hendrix catalog runs deep, and he’s played ‘Spanish Castle Magic’ on multiple occasions, and I’ve played it in the past. When it came up on this G3, I was very excited because it’s a great song to play. It’s just got a great feel to it, and the groove for soloing is very open. I was very happy to see that.”
“I hate the word ‘competition.’ But if we didn’t want to challenge each other, we wouldn’t have agreed to do the tour.”—Joe Satriani
“I remember doing so many cover songs over the past few decades, and every once in a while you come up with an all-purpose song that anyone, from any walk of life, can come join you on,” says Satriani. “And then you have these other songs that really shine a light on an individual’s foundation as a player and some of their early inspirations. I know that all three of us were so into Jimi Hendrix. I love doing that song. I’d do any Hendrix song. Eric and I have a lot of experience going out with the Experience Hendrix [tribute] tour. He figured into our early musical lives—even before I played guitar, I was a big Hendrix fan.”
“Crossroads” is also fascinating on many levels. Sure, it’s hard for any good rock band to screw this one up, and it could be the most obvious pick for any guitar jam, but the song’s simple blues structure also allows for a delicious whiplash, magnifying the vast differences in tonality and note choice between each guitarist.
“At first, when ‘Crossroads’ came in, I was like, ‘OK, it’s this classic rock song.’ But once you’re onstage and playing it, the riff is so great,” says Vai. “It’s robust. When you hear each guy solo, you can hear how we’ve changed through the years. Not just us—any guitar player who sticks with their craft goes through various evolutions into different directions. Some can stagnate, but you’re usually inching toward something different. Most of the time physicality is involved in that. When I hear ‘Spanish Castle Magic’ or ‘Crossroads,’ the stuff on this jam, my ears are listening to 30 years ago, in a sense, when we would trade. Today, 30 years later, you can really see more of the dynamic difference in our go-to notes and riffs. Joe is more Joe now; Eric is more Eric now; and I’m more me now. I’ve abandoned trying to sound conventional in any way.” The more they sound like the definitive versions of themselves, as on this G3 tour, the more in tune with each other they seem to be.Joe Satrian's Gear
The G3 mastermind would never use the word “competition,” but feels like his fellow G3ers wouldn’t show up if they didn’t want to be challenged.
Photo by Jon Luini
Guitars
- Various Ibanez JS Models (tuned to Eb standard)
Amps
- Marshall JVM410HJS
- Two Marshall 1960B 4x12 cabinets
Effects
- Vox Big Bad Wah
- Boss OC-3
- DigiTech SubNUp
- MXR EVH Flanger
- DigiTech Whammy
- Boss DD-8 (in effects loop)
- Voodoo Lab Pedal Power
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario XL110 (.010–.046)
- D’Addario Satch Grip Picks
“I would listen to Joe and Steve, and I would marvel at the guitar playing and the consistency of how great it was, but for me, it was [also] an opportunity to look beyond [it],” says Johnson. “It was a bit of an epiphany doing this tour because I tuned into the energy they had, the songs they were writing, the sounds they were getting, the shows they were doing. It even made the guitar playing more interesting because there was another dynamic I was tuning in to more. Not that it wasn’t always important, but as you get older, you try to see the whole hemisphere and what that means to the audience. It’s a win-win because it doesn’t take anything away from the guitar—it makes it more interesting to have encased in that bigger thing. I noticed that more this time, which made me feel good.”
“We can’t be everything to everybody.”—Eric Johnson
The G3 tour, and particularly the encore jams, are fascinating at the conceptual level: taking players largely renowned as soloists, and forcing them to share stages and trade licks—working to compliment each other’s playing instead of simply flexing their muscles and drawing on some primal competitive drive.
“The ego is the definition of competition,” says Vai. “Its perspective is, ‘How do I stack up? How do I rise above? How do I sell more, make more, have more, be more than anyone else?’ This is nothing personal to me—this is in the collective of humanity. Ego can wreak havoc in your life and cause a lot of dysfunction and stress. You don’t know it because you’re unconscious of the way the ego can be competitive. More in my earlier days, in the background, there was a perspective of competitiveness. This doesn’t just go for G3, but it was never in a playing way. I felt, ‘My playing is so abstract and bizarre that there’s no one else doing this weird stuff.’ Of course, this is still ego.”
Steve Vai's Gear
“When I hear ‘Spanish Castle Magic’ or ‘Crossroads,’ the stuff on this jam, my ears are listening to 30 years ago, in a sense, when we would trade,” remembers Vai.
Photo by Jon Luini
Guitars
- Ibanez mirror-topped JEM “BO”
- Ibanez John Scofield JSM
- Ibanez JEM 7VWH “EVO”
- Ibanez Universe 7-String
- Ibanez Hydra Triple-Neck Guitar
- Ibanez JEM 7VWH “FLO III”
- Ibanez PIA (tuned to Eb standard)
Amps
- Synergy SYN-2 Preamp
- VAI Synergy Module
- B-MAN Synergy Module
- Fractal Audio AXE-FX III Turbo
- Fryette LX-II Tube Power Amp
- Carvin V412 cabinets with Celestion Vintage 30 speakers
Effects
- Lehle A/B Box
- Dunlop 95Q Wah
- Ibanez Jemini Distortion/Overdrive
- DigiTech Whammy DT
- CIOKS DC-7 Power Supply
Strings, Picks, & Accessories
- Ernie Ball Skinny Top Heavy (.010–.052)
- Ernie Ball Regular Slinky (.010–.046)
- Ernie Ball Super Slinky (.009–.042)
- Ernie Ball 7-String Set (.009–.056)
- DiMarzio Cables
- Electric Fan
- InTuneGP GrippX Picks (1.14 mm and 1.50 mm)
“But when it came to Joe, it was a very different dynamic because he was my [guitar] teacher—he taught me how to play,” remembers Vai. “Joe was my mentor. I admired him. We were joined at the hip throughout our careers. In the earlier days, you listened to the other guy, and there’s the perspective. One is a very egoic perspective, which sees things as competition. The other perspective is, ‘What can I learn here? What can I get from this that’s going to improve my tools?’ Boy, there’s plenty of that in every G3 tour, every situation I’ve ever been in. But it’s a perspective only you can choose. The feeling of competition, I don’t like it. If someone is selling more records or playing faster or tastier or their songs are better, it behooves me to see how I can gain on a personal level from that. If I was the coach of a basketball team, I’d say, ‘It doesn’t matter if you win this game. It’s not as important as doing your very best.’ In reality, the only one you’re ever competing with is yourself—your bar.”
“If someone is selling more records or playing faster or tastier or their songs are better, it behooves me to see how I can gain on a personal level from that.”—Steve Vai
Satriani shares a similar sentiment—that being “complimentary” in a project like G3 is a real talent and a gift. Working on the documentary has put him in a retrospective mode, thinking about past tours and how they’ve worked to be more expansive and, perhaps, even provocative in their presentation.
Eric Johnson's Gear
“We can’t be everything to everybody. Then you start appreciating what someone else is doing even more,” says Johnson.
Photo by Jim Summaria
Guitars
- 1958 Fender Stratocaster
- Fender Eric Johnson Signature Stratocaster
- Fender Stratocaster with internal preamp
Amps
- Fender Bandmaster Reverb
- 50-watt Marshall JTM45 Super Tremolo
- 100-watt Marshall JTM45 Super Tremolo
- Two-Rock Classic Reverb Signature
- ’60s stereo Marshall cabinet with Electro-Voice EVM12L speakers
- ’60s Marshall cabinet with vintage 25-watt Celestion Greenback speakers
Effects
- EP-3 Echoplex
- TC Electronic Chorus
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- Dunlop Fuzz Face
- MXR M-166 Digital Time Delay
- Dunlop Cry Baby Wah
- BK Butler Tube Driver
- Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man
- Bill Webb Fuzz Pedal
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario Pure Nickel (.010–.046)
- Dunlop Jazz III picks
“Yesterday I was searching for an original print of a photo from [the G3 tour] in ’97,” he says, “where Robert Fripp was opening the shows, unannounced, hidden behind a wall of gear. That was his request—to play as people were filing into the venues. I found this great photo of Robert onstage with his guitar and four-year-old ZZ standing next to him holding a plastic pail—I think it was at Jones Beach. It reminded me of how crazy the notion was at the time of Robert joining up with the tour. But he was so excited about it and wanted to do it. We had fantastic times traveling together and hanging out backstage and getting to know each other on that particular tour, and that set the tone for me—knowing that, not only did I have comrades like Eric and Steve, who felt the same way that I did about collaboration in a live setting, but now there was Robert and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and the concept of G3 started to really catch fire. It was really heartwarming to know that this sort of gunslinger attitude that existed in the ’80s about guitar players could be challenged. We could create something really inclusive about different styles and generations of players and take it on the road. That came back to me when I saw that photo.”
“I hate the word ‘competition,’” Satriani says elsewhere, surveying G3 history. “But if we didn’t want to challenge each other, we wouldn’t have agreed to do the tour. We get to hear each other’s sets, which is great—we don’t often get to do that when we’re off on our own tours. And then we get to stand next to each other and see what just pops out of nowhere, what each artist decides to throw out as an improvisation. Every night is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. If you can somehow work that into your musical life, you’re really lucky—so I count myself really lucky.”
YouTube It
Watch Satriani, Johnson, and Vai tear through Cream’s classic interpretation of “Crossroads.” In this video, directed by ZZ Satriani, you can get a feel for the history the trio shares with vintage G3 clips and more.
Meet Siccardi Number 28: a 5-ply, double-cut solidbody tribute to Paul Bigsby’s “Hezzy Hall” guitar.
Reader: Mark Huss
Hometown: Coatesville, PA
Guitar: Siccardi Number 28
May we all have friends like Ed Siccardi—along with a rare stash of tonewoods and inspiration to pay tribute to a legendary luthier.
I have too many guitars (like at least some of you I’m sure), but my current No. 1 is a custom guitar made for me by my friend Ed Siccardi. Ed is an interesting and talented fellow, a retired mechanical engineer who has amazing wood and metal shops in his basement. He also has an impressive collection of tonewoods, including rarities like African mahogany and some beautiful book-matched sets. He likes to build acoustic guitars (and has built 26 of them so far), but decided he wanted to make me an electric. The fruit of this collaboration was his Number 27, a Paul Bigsby tribute with a single-cut body—looking very much like what Bigsby made for Merle Travis. Note that Bigsby created this single-cut body and “Fender-style” headstock way before Gibson or Fender had adopted these shapes. This was a really nice guitar, but had some minor playing issues, so he made me another: Number 28.
Number 28 is another Paul Bigsby tribute, but is a double cutaway a la the Bigsby “Hezzy Hall” guitar. This guitar has a 5-ply solid body made of two layers of figured maple, cherry, swamp ash, and another layer of cherry. The wood is too pretty to cover up with a pickguard. The tailpiece is African ebony with abalone inlays and the rock-maple neck has a 2-way truss rod and extends into the body up to the bridge. It has a 14" radius and a zero fret. Therefore, there is no nut per se, just a brass string spacer. I really like zero frets since they seem to help with the lower-position intonation on the 3rd string. The fretboard is African ebony with abalone inlays and StewMac #148 frets. The peghead is overlaid front and back with African ebony and has Graph Tech RATIO tuners. The guitar has a 25" scale length and 1.47" nut spacing. There are two genuine ivory detail inlays: One each on the back of the peghead and at the base of the neck. The ivory was reclaimed from old piano keys.
This is Number 27, 28’s older sibling and a single-cut Bigsby homage. It’s playing issues led to the creation of its predecessor.
I installed the electronics using my old favorite Seymour Duncan pairing of a JB and Jazz humbuckers. The pickup selector is a standard 3-way, and all three 500k rotary controls have push-pull switches. There are two volume controls, and their switches select series or parallel wiring for their respective pickup coils. The switch on the shared tone control connects the bridge pickup directly to the output jack with no controls attached. This configuration allows for a surprisingly wide variety of sounds. As an experiment, I originally put the bridge volume control nearest the bridge for “pinky” adjustment, but in practice I don’t use it much, so I may just switch it back to a more traditional arrangement to match my other guitars.