The blooming Nashville guitar ace details how a single bent note caught her ear, unlocking a masterclass in blues from one of the genre's groundbreakers.
Before you can run, you gotta walk, and playing guitar is no different. This year, big names like Doug Aldrich, Devin Townsend, Andy Timmons, Eva Gardner, Matt Heafy, and others detail their earliest, biggest influences.
10. Does It Doom?'s Steve Reis on Black Sabbath's "Black Sabbath"
Premier GuitarThe envoy of evil honors Tony Iommi's ominous opening odyssey that is a foreboding fight between light and dark that ultimately sparked several subgenres of metal.
9. Joey Landreth on Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Texas Flood"
Premier GuitarThe Canadian guitar slinger recalls the moment that cemented his passion for playing thanks to SRV's evocative delivery and compelling chord voicings.
8. Jason Richardson on Lamb of God and Dream Theater
Premier GuitarThe All That Remains shredster details two technically challenging riffs that leveled-up his playing and he shouts out the latter for springboarding him into 7-strings.
7. Daniela Villarreal on Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole"
Premier GuitarThe Warning's guitarist remembers first being mesmerized by Matt Bellamy's captivating performances and then empowered to front her own power trio.
6. Trivium's Matt Heafy on In Flames' “Artifacts of the Black Rain"
Premier GuitarThe heavy metal maven details how music made more sense to him after digesting the swift Swedes coupling of "raw, intense screaming vocals with such beautiful guitar melodies."
5. Andy Timmons on the Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There"
Premier GuitarThanks to an older brother, the instrumental star became fascinated with the Fab Four who's early B-side introduced him to the guitar solo.
4. Melissa Dougherty on Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing"
Premier GuitarThe 6-string foil for Grace VanderWaal and Mayer Hawthorne was mesmerized by the guitar god's dexterous orchestration and explains why the song is great for teaching solo-guitar compositions.
3. Eva Gardner on Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On"
Premier GuitarThe bassist for Pink and Cher explains how John Paul Jones' rhythmic tightrope of whimsical melody and driving might still hits her today.
2. Devin Townsend on Judas Priest's "The Sentinel"
Premier GuitarThe once Strapping Young Lad chronicles the "pinnacle moment" with the Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing riff that helped him earn "social collateral" and he became "moderately accepted" with schoolmates.
1. Doug Aldrich on Free's "All Right Now"
Premier GuitarThe Dead Daisies' sharpshooter guitarist runs through his favorite A-chord riffs before zeroing in on Paul Kossoff's magic.
Initially intimidated, the French rocker slowly worked out the Southern-fried chicken pickin’ guitar crash course and picked up multiple techniques—hammer-ons, pull-offs, ghost notes, double-stops, and open strings—that still feed her need for speed.
Rocker Laura Cox is a born southpaw, but damn right she can country pick with the best of them—using the typical right-handed guitar setup and approach. In this new episode of PG’s Hooked, Laura rip on Brad Paisley’s fleet-fingered riffs to his song “The Nervous Breakdown,” an instrumental from his 1999 debut album Who Needs Pictures. The tune helped define Paisley’s identity as a player to be reckoned with. But no Tele for Cox. She burns it up on an Epiphone Cornet.
Laura recounts that when she first heard the tune, “It was so fast I thought I would never be able to play it.” But then she decoded Paisley’s approach and learned that he was using multiple techniques to make it easier to execute: hammer-ons, pull-offs, ghost notes, double-stops, open strings, and a helping of Southern-fried chicken pickin’. In short, it’s all in the fretboard hand, as she explains.