Music is the universal language
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“At 94 one does not slow down, one turns the volume up”: Star Trek legend William Shatner announces metal album
Legendary Canadian actor William Shatner – best known for portraying Captain James T. Kirk in the Star Trek franchise – has announced plans to release a heavy metal album this year.
The 94-year-old actor says a star-studded cast of 35 metal legends will appear on the album. At the time of writing, we’re not entirely sure who’ll be lucky enough to be part of that roster, but according to Metal Hammer, Shatner’s longtime friend Zakk Wylde will be heavily involved, as well as Henry Rollins and Ritchie Blackmore.
William Shatner has enjoyed an enduring friendship with Black Label Society frontman and Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde for many years. The pair teamed up on a collaborative spoken word record, Seeking Major Tom, in 2011, and sat alongside Slipknot’s Corey Taylor and Sharon Osbourne to take part in a televised roast of Wylde.
It’s said that a large source of inspiration for the new metal album was both a guitar Zakk Wylde personally gifted Shatner, and Shatner’s recent collaboration with former Megadeth guitarist Chris Poland, which saw him deliver a spoken word intro to a song on Nuclear Messiah’s new album, Black Flame.
“When Nuclear Messiah came to life, something clicked,” says Shatner in a statement shared with Guitar World. “It wasn’t just a track – it was a doorway. It made me want to go all the way in, bring in the best metal players I could find, and create something fearless.”
In a social media post announcing the project, Shatner says: “I have explored space. I have explored time. Now, I explore distortion. Yes. You read that correctly. I am releasing a heavy metal album. 35 metal virtuosos. Thunderous guitars. Chaos with purpose.”
Shatner explains that the album will comprise both covers of songs by legendary metal heavyweights including Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, as well as a number of originals “forged in the same cosmic fire”.
“This project is, quite literally, a gathering of forces,” Shatner goes on. “Loud imagination. Honest intensity. Unapologetic exploration.
“At 94, one does not slow down. One turns the volume up. So prepare yourselves. We are about to boldly headbang where no one has headbanged before. Stay tuned. The metal voyage begins this year.”
That’s all the info we have on the album at this time, but we’re very excited, so trust us when we say we’ll keep you in the loop as we know more…
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Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood “found it strange” the band didn’t play any new material on their recent reunion tour
Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood has been reflecting on their recent tour, and says he found it odd that they didn’t play any new material while on the road.
After a seven-year hiatus, Radiohead reunited and embarked on a EU/UK tour last year spanning 20 shows. Prior to this, Greenwood had been working on orchestral and film composition work, and even though the band enjoyed the stint, it seems a new record is unlikely.
Speaking to The Times, Greenwood shares, “It was great to revisit songs that we always felt were good and to find lots of other people now agree with us. And it was really nice to be playing and listening to Thom [Yorke] again. But I found it strange not to be doing anything new on the tour. I guess we are all doing new music elsewhere now so that’s where our creative energies are going.”
Asked about the possibility of a new album from the band, he replies, “I’ve no idea. I mean, I’m surprised that the tour actually happened and that we all enjoyed it so much. But venues get booked so far in advance. To do another we would have to decide now, and even then it wouldn’t happen for 18 months.”
Recently, Greenwood spoke out against the use of his music in the Melania Trump documentary. The documentary was released at the end of January this year, and centred around Melania’s life in the days leading up to her husband’s 2025 inauguration.
A section of music from the score that Greenwood wrote for the 2017 film Phantom Thread was used in the doc, and both he and its director released a statement sharing their unhappiness.
“It has come to our attention that a piece of music from Phantom Thread has been used in the Melania documentary. While Jonny Greenwood does not own the copyright in the score, Universal failed to consult Jonny on this third-party use which is a breach of his composer agreement,” they allege. “As a result Jonny and Paul Thomas Anderson have asked for it to be removed from the documentary.”
Guitar.com reached out to Universal for comment.
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Wolfgang Van Halen thinks rock music is “perfectly great where it is”: “There’s room for everything”
Modern rock might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but Wolfgang Van Halen believes it’s exactly where it needs to be right now.
Wolf is driving rock music forwards with his own band, Mammoth, and while some people may believe the genre is oversaturated, he believes there’s room for all kinds of bands and musicians within it. With artists like Yungblud, Sleep Token, and many more taking off, it’s clear rock isn’t going anywhere, but is definitely evolving.
During an interview with Special K of The Sound 228, Wolfie says (via Blabbermouth), “I think there’s room for everything. I think it’s a knee-jerk reaction for people to be upset about this or that.
“In this day and age, we’re just inundated with a crazy amount of things, but I think there’s room for everything to breathe and to coexist. So I think rock is perfectly great where it is. If it changes, that’s cool. If it doesn’t, I think there’s a space for everybody to enjoy it.”
Asked for his advice for up-and-coming musicians, he replies, “You really gotta love the playing and the writing of the music part, ‘cause the business, like every other business, is a very predatory and tough-to-navigate sort of thing. So I think as long as the writing and the playing of the music is what matters to you more than anything, I don’t think you can lose.”
Last year, WVH spoke of his own place within rock, and said he felt happy that people were beginning to take him seriously as an artist in his own right, rather than Eddie Van Halen’s son.
“It’s pretty great,” he said during an interview with Radio Futuro. “I’m very lucky and happy that people are beginning to take me seriously as my own artist and separate me from my family history.
“At the end of the day, that’s all I would really like to do, is be taken at face value for what I represent and not for what my family represents. And I think that’s why I’m trying to do something different.”
You can catch Mammoth on tour this year, with shows kicking off in March. Find out more via the Mammoth website.
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“Always ready to ribbit”: This pedal makes your guitar sound like a frog – because why the hell not
The pedal market is full of marvellous creations. Whether you’re wanting to add a toot of flatulence to your track with the Fart Pedal, or capture the essence of Japanese Vocaloid Hatsune Miku with Korg’s Miku Guitar Pedal, there’s plenty of options out there. Now, if only you could make your guitar sound like a frog…
Wait – what’s that? You can!? That’s right – FruitFX has hopped to the challenge, collaborating with Jordan.wav to create the Frog Pedal. Boasting croaky riffs and ribbits, this mighty monophonic octaver pedal is sure to tempt the amphibian ladies back to your lily pad.
Originally crafted from one of Jordan.wav’s own pedal creations from 2010, which he explains “created a bit of online buzz” back in the day. The renewed FruitFX Frog Pedal adds a few extra elements to make it shine.
Users have the option of adjusting two separate dials: both Volume and, unsurprisingly, Frog. Full-Frog will provide a full-bodied froggy experience (“think Bull Frog”), while its lower setting provides a snappier fuzzy sound. There’s also a switch to adjust your octave drops, with the option of dropping just one octave, or two octaves for a “deep growling effect”.
With the Frog Pedal, there’s plenty of fun to be had. You can enlist the entire pond by playing chords, allowing you to curate your own frog choir, or you can just twang a single note if you’re just wanting to scatter in a few croaks.
If we were to put this froggish transformation into words, it’s like a fuzzy octave drop. It’s pretty groovy, honestly – we could imagine it being a fun way to quirk up a slap bass performance in particular. As Jordan.wav puts it, it’s “funky, massive, and froggy in the best possible way”.
Alongside its sonic charm, this analogue stompbox also looks pretty dang cute. Who could resist that little cartoon frog? He looks very trustworthy. And the website vows that he is “always ready to ribbit”, so don’t keep him waiting.
The FruitFX x Jordan.wav Frog Pedal is available now for £124. For more information, head to FruitFX.
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“He said, ‘I wish I could let that go, but it’s hard!” Paul Gilbert explains why Joe Satriani feels the need to “prove” he can shred on his records
You’d think that once you’re Paul Gilbert or Joe Satriani, the need to prove you can shred would quietly disappear. Between platinum records, sold-out tours and decades of jaw-dropping guitar technique, what exactly is left to demonstrate?
Quite a lot, as it turns out.
Speaking to MusicRadar, the Gilbert admits that resisting the urge to tear into full-blown shred mode isn’t always easy – even when the song might benefit from restraint.
“Well, I try to be aware of my own habits, both good and bad, and so, if I find myself getting too dense, I’ll try to slow down,” he says. “To me, that is actually a courageous thing to do, to not go crazy all the time, and rely on the fact that it works for the song – and not have to prove yourself every single second.”
That need to “prove” yourself isn’t unique to Gilbert. And he realised just how universal it was during a conversation with one of guitar’s biggest names.
“It was funny, I did a [guitar] camp once with Joe Satriani,” he recalls. “I can’t remember exactly how he worded it but he said something like, ‘Every time I do an album, I feel like the first song I have to prove that I can play guitar.’ And he said, ‘I don’t like that. I wish I could let that go. But it’s just really hard!’ I thought, ‘I know exactly what you mean.’”
“There’s like this athletic element where you want to prove that you can still swim – like you’re Michael Phelps, ‘I can still swim just as fast as I did when I was 22!’”
And yet, some of his most effective playing arrives when he does the opposite. On Orderly And Distinctly, from his forthcoming album WROC, Gilbert deliberately reins it in.
“The solo is almost like something the Edge from U2 would do, just basically playing a three-note melody over and over again,” says the musician. “And then there is a little bit in the end where I play the vocal line on guitar. But the majority is almost like it’s just a riff. That one, to me, it was perfect for the song, and it’s not a shred thing, and it’s not a prog thing. It is just, like, this melody fits here.”
WROC is now available for pre-order and arrives on 27 February via Music Theories.
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Neural DSP Quad Cortex Mini review: “this is the most universal Quad Cortex yet”
$1,399/£1,129, neuraldsp.com
Finland might have spent the best part of the last decade at the top of the World Happiness Report table, but Helsinki-based Neural DSP seems to have a rare talent for inciting the opposite emotion in large swathes of the guitar internet.
It’s easy to forget that it’s been less than five years since Guitar.com brought you the world-exclusive review of the Quad Cortex – a truly game-changing hybrid of profiling and modelling that has since replaced traditional amps for arena bands, touring artists and even pub giggers. The fidelity and usability of Neural’s hardware has made Doug Castro’s company one of the biggest new players in the guitar world, but it’s also had a trickier side effect.
When you reshape the entire gear landscape with your first hardware product, expectations are raised to unreasonable levels – and it’s something the company has been battling against for the last few years.
Image: Adam Gasson
The launch of the Nano Cortex in 2024 was the first sign that people on the internet were going to get weird when it came to new Neural products. While a bizarre pre-launch video didn’t do them many favours, the sheer vitriol that greeted what was an unquestionably excellent product was bizarre. It was taking pelters, primarily it seemed, for not being the fantasy product people on forums had dreamed up in their head – a Quad Cortex that was roughly a third of the size, but featured all the same functionality and features for a third of the price.
Neural admitted it was somewhat taken aback by the response in the aftermath, and it’s perhaps not surprising that they’ve simplified the pre-release hype somewhat with recent releases. But with the release of a brand new Cortex product – and one that seemingly gives people the vast majority of things they complained was missing from the Nano – the grumblers are back: certainly they were in full voice in our Instagram comments.
But does any of this actually matter? Well, no… the awkward truth is that as loud as the boo-boys are online, it makes not one jot of difference to whether the Quad Cortex Mini is actually any good in the real world. So let’s ruminate on that, shall we?
Image: Adam Gasson
Neural DSP Quad Cortex Mini – what is it?
In the grand old tradition of saying what you see, the Quad Cortex Mini is… well, a Mini Quad Cortex. Unlike the Nano, which stripped down a fair bit of the functionality to turn a $1,500 pedal into a $500 one, the Mini keeps the QC’s mojo intact, but in a form factor that’s roughly a third of the size – just 8 inches long and a hair over 4.5 inches wide.
That ambitious goal is what gives the Mini its rather polarising look – in order to squeeze the QC’s impressive and essential 7” capacitive touchscreen into a box this size, concessions have had to be made. That means we lose seven of the QC’s 11 footswitches, as well as the rotary volume knob (replaced by a subtle up/down switch on the pedal’s top), as well as a few elements of the I/O side of things.
There’s one fewer combi-jack input here – though you do still get a standard jack input for stereo rigs – and the dual effects loops are now condensed into a combined input/output pair that you’ll need a TRS insert cable to utilise both loops. Another sacrifice to space is the second expression pedal output – if you want to run two expression pedals you’ll need to connect one via MIDI.
Far be it for me to dismiss the I/O needs of the wider guitar community, but certainly from my point of view, these feel like the sort of niche-use luxuries that I’d be happy to sacrifice to get a Quad that fits on my Pedaltrain Nano and costs $400 less… your mileage may vary, of course.
Other than that, Neural is at pains to stress that it is 100 per cent a Quad Cortex – with the same underlying hardware, UX and processing power as the big boi, just in a box that looks like someone’s put an iPhone on a punishing protein supplement regimen.
Ah yes, the screen – the thing that has provoked the most chin-stroking amongst guitar people in the weeks since the Mini’s launch. Neural has been at pains to stress that making the top surface of an effects pedal that is designed to be stepped on in a variety of dimly lit environments is fine. They say they’ve tested it to extremes and that you don’t have to worry about that glass cracking under normal use. I would counter that by saying that Apple has been boasting about how hardcore the glass in their iPhone screens is for the last decade and yet every town in the land has at least two shops that do screen repairs…
Image: Adam Gasson
Neural DSP Quad Cortex Mini – build quality
Right then, let’s get this out of the way up top: the screen. I’ll admit to firmly being in the eyebrow-raised camp when I saw the QC Mini at NAMM this year, but having spent some time with it at home, I can’t deny that this feels like an incredibly well-made piece of kit.
It’s reassuringly heavy, precision engineered, and that glass feels thick and has coped with plenty of stomping over my few weeks of testing without so much as a scratch.
As I’m a clumsy oaf, I’ve also knocked a few things onto it, dropped it onto my desk (oops), and generally not been particularly careful with it and it still looks as pristine as it did when I pulled it out of the box.
I did contemplate dropping a Les Paul strap button-first onto it from a height, but I was genuinely worried my guitar would come off worse than the pedal. In lieu of that, I’d say don’t drop anything very heavy onto it, or drop it from a great height onto a hard floor. To be fair, this is generally just good (and you would hope unnecessary) advice when talking about any pedal that doesn’t have Boss written on its rubber-capped footswitch.
The pedal’s unconventional design doesn’t exactly help on the reassurance side of things. The proximity of the switches to that screen – and the way you have to step across them due to the way they’re laid out – does invite an accidental step on the screen in a way that it wouldn’t were the switches all situated on one side or in a line across the bottom. It’s for this reason that I can still see DeckSaver doing a fairly good trade if they were to make a perspex cover to slot over the top of this thing – belt and braces and all that.
A big tick however, for the new locking power cable – a great way to ensure that your entire rig won’t be plunged into silence because someone trips or yanks the power cable during set-up or mid-gig – especially given that the QC Mini takes about a minute to reboot after a reset or power loss.
Image: Adam Gasson
Neural DSP Quad Cortex Mini – usability
It’s perhaps inevitable that a pedal offering significantly fewer actual physical controls would have a bit more of a learning curve than its bigger brother, and so it is with the Mini.
This is most apparent when you boot the QC Mini up for the first time – unlike the original Quad, it doesn’t have that instant intuitive setup, especially if you’re not overly familiar with the QC’s existing UX. Each of the three modes – preset, stomp and scenes (effectively presets within a preset) – requires you to learn a series of tap-dancing switch shortcuts to switch between sounds and the like.
There’s an element of this with any multi-effects of course, but it’s definitely accentuated here because of how many functions are tied to these four switches. The tuner, for example, is selected by a quick tap on the A and C footswitches together… but closing it requires you to hit the B footswitch instead of simply tapping the same one again. Equally, holding down those two switches simultaneously instead of a taping on them scrolls up between the preset banks in preset mode.
It sounds more confusing than it is in practice, but it does require you to wire your brain to the specific set of button presses to get stuff done in a way that you didn’t necessarily have to with the bigger unit.
One thing that I certainly do appreciate is the clever addition of rotary footswitches. Each of the four switches also doubles as a rotary control that is smart-bound to select and then edit certain parameters. It’s a dramatically more precise and useful way of tweaking your sound both in a live setting or in the studio – and offsets a fair bit of the tedium of endless touchscreen fiddling.
The QC Mini having wifi for wireless updates and downloading new presets and captures is a fantastic holdover from the original QC, but I was disappointed that unlike the Nano, it doesn’t have Bluetooth, thus meaning that you can’t pair it with the Cortex Cloud app.
The Cortex Cloud app is essential for creating presets on your phone that you could then load onto the screen-less Nano wirelessly, but it’s a shame that the Mini doesn’t offer similarly smooth off-pedal editing.
You can connect it to your laptop via USB-C and use the Cortex Control app of course, but given that this pedal is designed more than its bigger brother to live on a pedalboard, it’s a shame you have to either take it off your board or get down on your hands and knees to do the deep stuff. Is it a big hassle? No, but Neural is usually so good at streamlining the creation process, it’s a rare oversight.
Image: Adam Gasson
Neural DSP Quad Cortex Mini – sounds
The greatest compliment I can give Neural about the entire Cortex ecosystem is that no matter what piece of hardware I’m talking about, the sounds section could be copy and pasted without much in the way of deviation. There’s a reason that all your favourite bands have pivoted to the Quad Cortex in some way shape or form – the quality and consistency of the sounds on tap is truly remarkable.
While the out of the box presets do tend to skew more towards the heavier side of the market (a perception that Neural has been starting to change recently), the quality and fidelity of these sounds – not to mention the instant usability of them – is quite a thing to behold.
A lot of multi-effects presets are about showing off – showcasing all the myriad different sounds you can get out of a thing without thinking too much about whether these sounds would actually work in a mix, but Neural doesn’t get too caught up in this. The basic presets showcase a Mount Rushmore of iconic amps presented without too much embellishment – meaning you could boot it up and roll right into a Marshall Plexi or a Deluxe Reverb and use it without ever needing to get into the deep editing side of things.
And it bears repeating how impressive not just the sound but the feel of Neural’s captures are – more so than anything else I’ve tried. Is it indiscernible from a real valve amp? Well, yes – but only slightly. It’s also probably not quite as good sonically as Universal Audio’s amp pedals – but they cost $400 each, and feel as good in terms of response.
I always think the high gain and ethereal clean amp models are the easiest things for digital to replicate – it’s the stuff in between where you really earn your coin. And it’s here that I find myself dwelling more often than not. Cranked vintage Marshalls, cooking Tweed combos, these are the things that digital has always struggled with, but the QC Mini makes them compelling and organic.
The built-in suite of effects is impressive too – especially compared to the pared-down offering that the Nano provides – and it’s also very nice to be able to try out a bunch of captured dirt pedals in the chain, too.
While the QC Mini plays nicely with pedals both in and out of the loop, and does so in a way that feels organic and authentic, the quality and variety of the effects on tap will likely cause many players to consider whether they even need them. There’s serious horsepower under the hood here, and it’s being put to very good use.
Image: Adam Gasson
Neural DSP Quad Cortex Mini – should I buy one?
It would seem that Castro and his mates can’t win at this stage. They’ve been Mark Hamill-ed; doomed to have their stratospheric early success hung round their necks like a millstone, no matter what they do next.
It felt harsh when Neural started getting so much grief about the Nano Cortex, and the grumbling feels even more out of place here. The Quad Cortex Mini is everything that fans have been asking for in terms of size and functionality – it’s a truly pedalboard-ready QC that makes very few compromises (and those it does are broadly quite acceptable).
I’ve seen a lot of grumbling about the price, but this is still $400 cheaper than the original – what exactly were people expecting here? Players may compare the Quad Cortex Mini to the HX Stomp, conveniently forgetting that they are quite different bits of kit in both form and function. Line 6’s new Helix Stadium is a more fair competitor, and that costs about the same as the original Quad, and hasn’t even launched its Proxy profiling technology yet.
Unquestionably, $1,400 is a hell of a lot of money to spend on any damn thing – but in the context of the high-end, capture-enabled modeller world, it’s about par? It intentionally sits nebulously between the full-fat QC and the Nano, but offers a much more complete package than its screenless stablemate.
There are so many options for so many use cases in the modern world of modellers and multi-effects – but the Mini might be the most universal one of the lot. They know how to make people happy in Finland, and when you plug in the Quad Cortex Mini, it’s impossible not to smile.
[products ids=”19PQzuW8mz3waD0guXZFLS”]
Neural DSP Quad Cortex Mini – alternatives
There are, bluntly, shitloads of options at all manner of price points in the multi-effects and amp modelling game, but not many of them have both the profiling ability of the Quad Cortex, nor its huge library of user captures that is Cortex Cloud. If your budget doesn’t stretch to the QC Mini, then the Nano Cortex ($569 / £449) is an impressive gateway to the ecosystem. The Line 6 Helix Stadium XL ($1,699 / £1,549) is a big, unapologetic high-end modelling station, but with its own Proxy capture technology dropping imminently, it’s got the potential to offer much more than previous Helix units. If you want profiling on an absolute budget, the Tonex Pedal ($329 / £329) is limited in functionality but has some impressive sounds and features. Finally, the OG is of course Kemper, and the brand’s Profiler Stage Mk II ($1,649 / £1,499) can compete with the best of them sonically – in terms of ease of use and modern convenience however, the German brand is lagging far behind.
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“These are recordings that were going to be the next Van Halen record”: Alex Van Halen sheds light on upcoming “Van Halen” album featuring Steve Lukather
![[L-R] Steve Lukather and Eddie Van Halen](https://guitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Steve-Lukather-Eddie-Van-Halen-hero@2000x1500.jpg)
Last year, Alex Van Halen teased that he and Toto’s Steve Lukather were working together on a new Van Halen record. Now, the Van Halen drummer has shed more light on the project.
While it’s unclear whether it will be released under the ‘Van Halen’ name, the record will feature a slew of archival Van Halen demos. Speaking to Brazilian journalist Gastão Moreira for Kazagastão, Alex explains that the project will rework tracks that he and his brother, Eddie Van Halen, never finished. “These are recordings that were going to be the next [Van Halen] record,” he explains [via Blabbermouth]. “We stopped because [Eddie] didn’t live that long…”
In the past, Alex has previously insisted that there is enough Van Halen material in the vault for another “three or four records”. It seems that this project with Lukather will allow some of those tracks to see the light of day.
“Many people have asked, ‘What about releasing unreleased stuff?’” he says. “Well, we’re not gonna release it in its embryonic form because it wouldn’t make any sense. But I’ve been fortunate enough to have Steve Lukather, who was a good friend of Ed’s, and we’re working on putting a record together.”
As Alex explains, “quality” is of the utmost importance. The release aims to honour Eddie’s original riffs, and create a record fans will love. “It’s not just to say, ‘Hey, here’s some music that we made,’” he says. “No – It has to be of a certain level of quality.”
That’s exactly why Lukather has played a pivotal role in the recording process. Last March, Alex told Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that, due to Lukather knowing his late brother, he has an understanding of how Eddie might have worked. “Ed and Steve Lukather were very good friends and they often worked together,” the drummer said [via Guitar World]. “There is no one who can do this process with me as well as he can.”
In the new chat with Moreira, Alex once again praises Lukather’s guitar skill. “He is the connective tissue,” he explains. “Luke can play anything – but because of this talent that kind of blends in with everything, he doesn’t get the recognition that I think he deserves… I love the guy. We’ve known him for years.”
Of course, some of Eddie’s original riffs may still be included. While he doesn’t exactly say “yes”, he hints that some guitar parts were already tracked. “The drums, the guitar and the bass are already in there,” he says. “What we didn’t have was a vocalist, and obviously the subtleties…”
Alex has also revealed that another key Van Halen cog will feature, with Wolfgang Van Halen once again serving his bass duties. Though he says “most” of the basslines are Wolf, due to the recordings being from those original Van Halen recording sessions prior to Eddie’s passing. It’s unclear whether Wolf has tracked anything in more recent studio sessions.
Considering the last piece of music Alex and Eddie written together, Unfinished, didn’t feature a vocalist, journalist Moreira asks whether any vocalists will feature on the upcoming record. “We originally had plans to have FREE’s Paul Rodgers… but he can’t do it anymore,” he reveals. “[We] are looking for somebody else now… I really believe that the universe will work something out, and this project will come out the best it can possibly be. We have no other intent other than to have it come to fruition.”
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Nile Rodgers reveals how a last-minute change to Shrek 2 made him “a fortune”
Sync licensing can be a highly lucrative income stream, particularly for artists who land their music in big Hollywood feature films. And as Nile Rodgers explains in a new interview with Vulture, a significant proportion of his earnings have come from such placements.
The guitarist has enjoyed an illustrious five-decade career dabbling in a whole host of different genres, most notably performing in disco powerhouse band Chic, and alongside A-list music stars like Daft Punk, Pharrell Williams and Michael Jackson, to name a few.
But his music has often been featured in motion pictures, too, including Chic smash hit Le Freak, which plays during a scene in Shrek 2. And as Rodgers explains, that placement earned him a fair bit of coin.
“A lot of my songs have brought in a lot of money from sampling, but the most lucrative ones have been placed in films,” he says.
“The only reason why I know that this one made a fortune was because of the length of the cue: There’s a film called The Birdcage from the mid-’90s, starring Robins Williams, that took place at a queer club in Miami.
“It opens with a camera going across South Beach and then the shot goes straight into a club where [Chic’s] We Are Family is being performed by a group of drag performers. It’s a very long music cue. And then We Are Family is played several more times later in the film. My bank account was happy to see that deposit.”
He goes on, explaining how he earned a “fortune” from the placement of Chic’s Le Freak in Shrek 2 (2004).
“The film originally had the Gap Band’s Burn Rubber (Why You Wanna Hurt Me) as the cue when Shrek and his girlfriend take off in the car and their friends are behind and watching their house. Or is it a cart? What do ogres drive?
Rodgers explains that the scene wasn’t landing with audiences during test screenings, leading producers to test out Le Freak instead.
“Right before Shrek 2 locked, and I really mean an hour or so before, I got a call asking if they could try Le Freak,” Rodgers recalls. “I said, ‘Sure, cool.’ So Shrek turns around and his friends are partying like crazy to Le Freak. It was clear that the song made the joke work. It’s a teeny, tiny cue, and I made a fortune.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Nile Rodgers speaks on his unashamedly confident approach to session work. Asked to name the most intimidating collaborator he’s ever worked with, he replies: “Nobody. No way, man.
“If I ever believed that, it would mean I’m walking into the studio and thinking, ‘You can make a record better than me.’ And nobody can make a record better than me. Please don’t take this in an egotistical way. Who have I made records with? Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, Al Jarreau, the London Symphony Orchestra. I’m not intimidated. I’m here to have fun…
“The one thing that’s super important is to make an artist know that I have their best interests at heart. That’s all I care about. My legacy is pretty much written.”
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It’s been a long wait, but the highly anticipated Line 6 Helix Stadium Floor is finally shipping
The wait is over – Line 6’s Helix Stadium Floor, the latest instalment in its Helix series, has finally began shipping.
Eight months ago, Line 6 first shared news of its new Helix Stadium amp modellers. In the initial announcement, the company teased a pair of new modellers, with the flagship Helix Stadium XL Floor earning an earlier release and shipping out at the end of last year. Now, it’s the Helix Stadium Floor’s time to shine.
While the XL model offers the most “comprehensive and integrated guitar processor ever created by Line 6”, according to the brand, the smaller Helix Stadium Floor offers a cheaper, more streamlined alternative. It scraps the built-in expression pedal, and halves the amount of effects loops, external expression pedals, and drum trigger inputs it can support to just two each.
While it’s taken a while for the ball to get rolling, the original announcement of the new amp modellers marked the 10th anniversary of the original Line 6 Helix.
A decade on, the new amps utilise a new modelling algorithm called Agoura, a revamped take on Helix’s HX modelling tech. The tech allows for more authentic amp modelling, as well as a more accuracy when modelling how a physical amp would respond to you.
Both the XL and streamlined Stadium model also have a ‘Hype’ control, allowing you to shift between “idealised” and “ultra-authentic” tone. This allows users the option of a cleaner, more digital sound or something a little more gritty and real.
The Stadium line also offers a new engine for live shows called Showcase. This can trigger MIDI changes, engage presets, and even automate lighting for your stage setup. As well as this, there’s also both WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity to store and make captures of your gear.
With its new improvements and revamped technology, Line 6 has promised that the Stadium line is its “most powerful and most flexible” Helix to date.
Eric Klein, Chief Product Design Architect, states: “Helix Stadium XL Floor and Helix Stadium Floor are in many ways a new type of product. In addition to featuring the best-sounding, most powerful, and most flexible processing Line 6 has ever offered, they can serve as performance workstations that aim to upend the way you approach playing – whether that’s writing and learning songs, jamming with friends, or controlling your band’s entire stage rig. And most of all, they’re fun to use.”
The Helix Stadium Floor is available now, with prices starting at $1,799.99. For more information, head to Line 6.
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“It’s a dream come true”: Gary Clark Jr’s signature Gibson honours his hero BB King
To honour Gary Clark Jr’s fusion of blues, rock, hip-hop and jazz, Gibson has unveiled a new signature model in his name. Inspired by BB King’s beloved Gibson, the Gary Clark Jr. ES-355 serves as a testimony to the blues legend as well as marking Clark’s ongoing impact on the genre.
While Clark has previously worked with Gibson on his SG and Casino models, this guitar is particularly special. “When I was a child, I had a poster on my wall with BB King playing his signature Lucille guitar,” Clark explains in a Gibson promo clip. “As a kid, I always wanted one of those guitars. I would go to the music shop, I would see them on the wall, and I liked the way that they sounded. I just wanted to be a part of that world.”
Handcrafted in Nashville by the Gibson Custom Shop, the Gary Clark Jr. ES-355 boasts a three-ply maple and poplar body. The multi-ply binding allows for a more vintage aesthetic, thanks to its figured maple outer layer and VOS Cobra Burst finish.
The guitar also has a mahogany neck, which has been shaped into a ‘50s Rounded Medium C profile, with a bound ebony fretboard. In terms of frets, you’re looking at 22 medium jumbo frets and mother‑of‑pearl block inlays.
Up on the headstock, there’s another vintage nod in the form of the iconic Gibson Custom Shop split diamond inlay. There are also Grover Rotomatic tuners, to add a more premium feel.
Credit: Gibson
The hardware has also all been finished in VOS nickel, emphasising that aged and vintage feel. That extends to the ABR‑1 Historic no‑wire bridge and a Bigsby® B7 vibrato. Gold Top Hat knobs with dial pointers have also been used to add that nostalgic edge.
The Gary Clark Jr. ES-355 is also kitted out with unpotted Custombuckers featuring Alnico 3 magnets, to capture a warm and dynamic range. The pickups are also wired with CTS audio taper pots and paper‑in‑oil capacitors, while there’s also a three‑way toggle, and a mono Varitone circuit to tweak and toy with your tone.
With a limited run of 100 guitars, it’s no wonder why the Gary Clark Jr. ES-355 has already sold out. Each lucky buyer will receive their guitar in a Gibson Custom hardshell case adorned with Gary Clark Jr. graphics.
Now a four-time Grammy Award winner, having his own signature Gibson is no longer a dream. It’s a reality he has earned. “It’s a dream come true, really,” he says. “And it’s one of the most versatile instruments… with the humbuckers and semi-hollow body, you can play it acoustic. It’s my go-to instrument at this time. And it’s gorgeous!”
For more information, head to Gibson.
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Metal-ready shredders and new Broadkaster models: Inside a massive new guitar drop from Jackson, Charvel and Gretsch
Since the furore of NAMM – where hundreds of brands launched more exciting new products than we could realistically keep track of – the world of guitar gear has felt relatively quiet. But it seems things are starting to switch back on, as a slew of new guitars arrive courtesy of Jackson, Charvel and Gretsch.
So get ready for some six-string eye-candy, and if you like, to nerd out on some spec sheets from the massive new drop. Here’s everything you need to know:
Jackson Pro Plus Pure Metal
Credit: Jackson
Three new guitars join Jackson’s blacked-out Pro Plus Pure Metal series, a line of instruments “built for speed and designed to withstand the demands of relentless touring”.
Comprising the Pro Plus Pure Metal Limited Edition Soloist SL1A, Limited Edition Rhoads RR1A and Limited Edition Kelly KE1A, the three new additions come loaded with singular Bare Knuckle Holydiver humbuckers, Floyd Rose 1000 Series double-locking tremolos and stainless steel frets.
Learn more at Jackson.
Charvel Pro-Mod Plus Dinky
Charvel has expanded its Pro-Mod Plus Dinky line with five new guitars, which blend “sophisticated style with assertive tone”.
Specifically, the new additions are the DK24 HH 2PT E in Raven Black and Celestial Silk, DK24 HH 2PT E QM in Midnight Ocean and Chlorine Burst, DK24 HH HT E QM in Violet Radiance, DK24 HSS 2PT QM in Blue Curaçao, Limited Edition DK24-7 HH 2PT EB in Celestial Silk.
These guitars sport Seymour Duncan Full Shred TB-10, Alnico Pro II APH-1N and Custom Flat Strat SSL-6 pickups in various configurations.
Learn more at Charvel.
Gretsch Broadkaster LX Figured Center Block with String-Thru Bigsby
Credit: Gretsch
Four new Broadkaster models join the Gretsch lineup: the Broadkaster LX – with a figured center block and string-thru Bigsby – in Havana Burst and Bourbon Stain, and the Broadkaster Jr. LX in Caramel Dawn and Tropic Aura. Both feature Pro Twin Six humbucking pickups and Adjusto-Matic bridges with string-thru Bigsby B7GP vibrato tailpieces.
Learn more at Gretsch.
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Thieves steal Martin D-28 worth $15k from Baltimore music store: “You feel violated – it’s really sad”
Police are appealing for help identifying four suspects believed to have stolen a Martin D-28 acoustic guitar worth $15,000 from a music store in Baltimore, Maryland.
The guitar – located high on the wall in the acoustic room at Music Land in Bel Air – was the target of a group of four thieves believed to be of Romani origin, police say. As CCTV footage shows, the suspects wait for the employee present to step out of the room, before taking the guitar from the wall and concealing it inside a big winter coat.
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“One of the female suspects was on lookout,” says store owner Larry Noto [via WMAR-2 News Baltimore]. “The other two suspects took the guitar. She had a long black winter coat on, a very puffy coat. It was freezing out. You know how it was a couple of weeks ago and had sort of a black bag that they slipped the guitar in.”
It’s believed that the theft took place in under a minute. Noto explains of the rare, high-price D-28: “This was a consignment piece from 1947, so a very rare, special piece that we just happened to have on sale as part of our consignment programme.”
“You know you trust people, and they came and they even said, ‘Oh, you have such a nice store,’ and we just thought these were nice people looking for guitars,” says Noto.
“You do feel violated and it was really sad and disturbing to watch the video that had happened. We’re a local family-owned business, [and have] served the community for 55 years.You just don’t think something like that’s going to happen to you.”
Those with information on any of the suspects are encouraged to contact Bel Air police on 410-638-4500.
Sadly, music gear remains a common target for thieves. Just this month, guitarist Chris Buck appealed for help finding a selection of gear stolen from his car in Bristol.
And Music Land is far from the first brick-and-mortar store to deal with thieves; for example, in 2024, criminals made off with a $5,200 Gibson Les Paul by simply walking out of a Canada store with it.
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“I started dicking around and said, ‘F**k, this is a totally new technique”: Eddie Van Halen explains the origins of his legendary tapping technique in unearthed 1978 interview
One of the greatest guitar players who ever lived, Eddie Van Halen is widely credited with popularising two-handed tapping as a guitar technique.
Many guitarists dabbled with tapping before Eddie entered the limelight in the late ‘70s – with evidence of the technique predating hard rock by decades, used by the likes of Harvey Mandel, Frank Zappa, Steve Hackett and Italian guitarist Vittorio Camardese, to name a few.
But it was Eddie who really brought tapping to a mainstream audience following the release of Van Halen’s landmark debut in 1978, and has become somewhat synonymous with the technique.
And in a newly unearthed 1978 interview with rock journalist, author and Eddie’s close friend Steve Rosen, the legendary guitarist can be heard recounting his experience stumbling across the technique, before it would later captivate audiences on classic Van Halen cut Eruption.
“It’s like having a sixth finger on your left hand,” Eddie explained shortly following the release of the band’s debut album. “Instead of picking, you’re hitting a note on the fretboard.”
Asked by Rosen whether he developed the technique himself or had heard it elsewhere, Eddie replied: “I really don’t know how to explain it. I was sitting in my room at the pad at home, drinking a beer. I remember seeing people just stretching one note and hitting the note once…
“Anyway, it’s just one note like that, and they popped the finger on it real quick to hit one note and I said, ‘Well, fuck nobody is really capitalising on that.’ I mean nobody’s really doing more than just one stretch and one note real quick.”
He continued: “So I started dicking around and said, ‘Fuck, this is a totally new technique that nobody really does.’ ‘Cause it is. I really haven’t seen anyone really get into that as far as they could because it is a totally different sound. A lot of people listen to that, and they don’t even think it’s a guitar.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Eddie reflected on how he “hates” bands at the time who overloaded their records with overdubs and extra tracks. He explained that the majority of the songs on Van Halen were relatively simple in terms of additional guitar tracks.
“I’d say out of the 10 songs, three of them, like Runnin’ with the Devil – [that’s] a melodic solo, so I put a rhythm underneath it, you know.
“Songs that have a spontaneous solo like I’m the One, Ice Cream Man, and most of the songs on the album – Ted [Templeman], our producer, felt, and us also, that it was good enough on its own without fattening it up. Also then when we play it live it sounds the same.
He went on: “I hate people – without naming names – all these bands, they over-produce in the studio, and then when they walk out on stage people go, ‘Wow, is that the same band?’ It doesn’t sound the same.
“With us, it sounds exactly the same, and maybe even better, because you get to see us doing it at the same time. It’s very energetic. We’ll get you up and shake your ass.”
You can watch the full unearthed 1978 interview below:
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“The king of random side quests”: Matty Healy goes viral for helping jumpstart a stranger’s car – and giving a TV to a perplexed Uber driver
All has been quiet in the world of The 1975 since their headline Glastonbury set last year, but it seems frontman Matty Healy has been undertaking a series of random side quests.
At the end of their set last summer, the word ‘DOGS’ flashed up on stage. Since then, Healy has suggested that the band are working on not one, but two new records during a Q&A at a college, and that DOGS could be the name of at least one of them.
No further details have yet been revealed, and it looks like Healy has his hands full. In a recent viral video, he was seen gifting a TV to an unsuspecting Uber driver, and in another viral post was photographed jumpstarting someone’s car.
Healy had recently taken over comedian Dax Flame’s Instagram for a week, where he shared a number of skits, including his random TV giveaway. A few weeks prior, a TikTok circulated of Healy helping to jumpstart the stranger’s car after it broke down.
You can see both posts below:
At the band’s Glasto set, Healy had a rather cool guitar in-hand: a creation of one of the Fender Custom Shop’s most interesting builders, Levi Perry, who has earned a rep for loading his builds with built-in effects. The Fuzz Brain ’67 Tele Matty used on the revered Pyramid Stage offered just that, with built in fuzz, octave and delay circuits.
Whether or not Healy has put any of his custom builds of vintage guitars down on the new albums to come from The 1975 is not yet clear, but one thing we’re certain of is that it won’t be heavy. In 2024, Healy said, “For me… unless you’re Glassjaw, Converge, Refused, or further than that, heavy is fucking lame… We can do heavy all day long, but we’re not because it wasn’t new. We wanted to be something quite new.”
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“Kiss are rock gods, but they don’t have a lot of roll to them”: Public Enemy leader Chuck D responds to Gene Simmons’ comments that hip-hop doesn’t belong in the Rock Hall
![Gene Simmons [main], Public Enemy's Chuck D [inset]](https://guitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Gene-Simmons-Chuck-D@2000x1500.jpg)
Should the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame be reserved only for veterans of the rock genre? It’s a stance Gene Simmons holds, and made clear during a recent appearance on the Legends N Leaders podcast.
“Hip-hop does not belong in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame – nor does opera or symphony orchestras,” he said.
Whether or not the Rock Hall should include artists from a wide range of genres is up for debate – but the fact remains that many non-rock artists, including hip-hop veterans like Public Enemy, Grandmaster Flash and Run-D.M.C., count themselves as inductees.
And in a new interview with TMZ, Public Enemy leader Chuck D refutes the comments of his fellow Rock Hall of Famer Gene Simmons, saying he’s missing the “roll” part of the Hall’s name.
“Everything else other than rock, when rock ‘n’ roll splintered in the ’60s, is the roll,” he explains [via NME]. “Soul music, reggae, hip-hop, which is rap music. Hip-hop is a culture, so it embodies sight, sound, story, and style.”
“But music, the vocal on top of the music, has already been determined. So that’s the roll, that’s flow, that’s the soul in it. Kiss are rock gods, but they don’t have a lot of roll to them.”
Chuck D is thee right person to address Gene Simmons’ tone deaf commentary.
I love how he focuses on the importance of music creation and narratives because it’s not enough to own our stories.
We have to keep telling them too. #BHMpic.twitter.com/qSIqLcxNTZ
— Renee (@PettyLupone) February 13, 2026
Gene Simmons attracted criticism with his initial comments, in which he spoke about hip-hop: “It’s not my music. I don’t come from the ghetto. It doesn’t speak my language.”
In a recent interview with People, the bassist denied that his comments were racially veiled, saying, “I stand by my words,” while adding: “Ghetto is a Jewish term… How could you be, when rock is Black music? It’s just a different Black music than hip-hop, which is also Black music.”
“Rock ‘n’ roll owes everything to Black music,” he concluded, adding: “All the major forms of American music owe their roots to Black music.”
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Whitesnake guitarist thinks fans should stop comparing different band lineups: “Come on, man, you like the band, or you don’t!”
When a band’s been in the game long enough, chances are they’ve been through a number of lineup changes to keep the wheels turning. And generally, fans will always hold one lineup in higher stead than others.
The ‘golden era’ of an artist’s career, while sometimes reflective of their period of peak commercial success, is often relative, and is different to different fans depending on when they discovered the artist’s music.
Hard rock outfit Whitesnake were a band with a laundry list of previous members, including Steve Vai, Bernie Marsden, Joel Hoekstra, Doug Aldrich and so many more over the course of their on-and-off 40-year career.
And in a new interview with Chaoszine, Dutch guitarist Adrian Vandenberg reflects on the fanbase’s tendency to have favourites in terms of lineups.
Remembering the band’s Restless Heart tour in 1997, he says: “In certain countries, it went great. South America, man, people went nuts. But in many other countries, they only wanted to hear the 1987 album.
“And England… holy shit, England has always been so split up. You got the guys saying, ‘Micky Moody and Bernie Marsden, that’s the real Whitesnake.’ Then the other guys go, ‘No, no, John Sykes is the shit.’
“It’s like Van Halen, you know? ‘Sammy Hagar is better than David Lee Roth.’ ‘No, Roth is the guy.’ I don’t know why people do that. Come on, man, you like the band, or you don’t, you know? So, the same thing was happening on that tour. People were expecting that big pompous 1987 sound in some countries.”
“We had some surreal experiences in weird cities, man,” he also says. “Great memories, and it was different playing with that lineup. We hit Japan, Europe, South America and Russia, which will probably never happen again the way the world is now. At least not in our lifetime – it’s a strange world we live in right now.”
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“We’ve been writing music together, recording at John’s house – it feels great”: Flea hints at new Red Hot Chili Peppers music on the horizon
It’s been four long years since the Red Hot Chili Peppers released 2022’s Unlimited Love – but there might be something new on the horizon. In a new interview with MOJO, bassist Flea hints that the band have been cooking up some new tunes.
While this March will see Flea releasing his solo jazz solo debut, Honora, fans have been wondering what that means for the bassist’s main gig with the Chili Peppers. MOJO addresses the elephant in the room, asking whether there’s any plans for a 13th album. “We’ve been writing music together, recording at [guitarist] John Frusciante’s house, and the music feels great,” Flea reveals.
As Flea puts it, the process has been a bit longer due to the hunt for “magic” in the studio. “Ultimately, once we start playing, it’s about… just catching a magic groove and doing it good,” he adds.
It’s the same approach he has adopted while recording his upcoming jazz record, and one he feels about music on the whole. While it’s an intuitive process working on his solo project, it can be more difficult in a band, due to there being multiple moving cogs in the machine. “It’s like being in a marriage with four people that’s always moving and changing, all these challenges and all the things that you have to deal with,” he explains.
“Egos are inescapable and my ego is as big and as fragile as anybody’s. But it’s always, no matter what, this intrinsic part of who I am and it’s alive and it’s beautiful and you never know what shape it’s going to take next. I really feel like that right now.”
In the past, Flea has made it clear that he never wants to produce rock for rock’s sake. In fact, in 2016 he told SiriusXM’s Pearl Jam Radio that he considered “rock music [to be] a dead form in a lot of ways”, far from its ‘90s heyday of “exciting” releases.
With that in mind, it makes sense that Flea is exploring other avenues of sound – and why the Red Hot Chili Peppers are determined to take their time making their next record, just to ensure their signature blend of funk, rap and rock feel utterly fresh.
Flea’s Honora solo debut will drop on 27 March, and will feature a slew of exciting artists including Thom Yorke and Nick Cave.
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“Eddie was acting crazy and bouncing off of walls in his underwear. Randy was like, ‘Oh okay… not the best time to meet this guy’”: Quiet Riot’s Kelly Garni says Randy Rhoads didn’t have a rivalry with Eddie Van Halen, rather a “fascination”
As the legend goes, Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen were like two ships passing in the night. Despite both earning their stripes on the 1970’s Sunset Strip, the pair of iconic guitarists rarely crossed paths. But that didn’t mean they didn’t know about each other.
With Quiet Riot and Van Halen both on the rise, Randy and Eddie became some of the hottest guitarists on the strip. It was impossible not to compare the two – especially when both bands would often play just doors down from each other. “We became well aware of Van Halen,” Quiet Riot’s original bassist Kelly Garni tells the Booked On Rock Podcast [transcribed by Ultimate Guitar]. “Especially when we’d [perform] at the Starwood… we knew they were playing down the street at Gazzarri’s.”
Garni notes that Van Halen existed in very different circles, frequenting venues that weren’t exactly Quiet Riot’s “type of a club”. However, their differences didn’t mean there was a rivalry between the pair. “There was no competition,” Garni explains. “Most certainly, there was no competition in Randy’s world. Because Randy didn’t compete.”
“It just wasn’t in Randy to try to compete,” he continues. “He couldn’t! The way his brain was wired… he could not form a thought like ‘Oh, I’m gonna be better than that guy!’”
In fact, rather than a rivalry, there was a fascination; Rhoads was curious to see just what Eddie Van Halen had to offer. “He went down to Gazzarri’s because people were talking about this guy,” Garni recalls. “Randy said, ‘I’ll go see what the deal is’… So he went there, he saw him play, and he went, ‘Yeah, OK, the guy’s good.’”
Apparently Rhoads even got himself backstage to meet his supposed ‘rival’. “Randy was trying to get backstage to meet him, and he did get back there…” the bassist says. “But Eddie was acting kind of crazy and bouncing off of walls in his underwear. And Randy was like, ‘Oh okay… not the best time to meet this guy.’”
So, rather than leaving with a burning sense of rivalry, Rhoads only thought: “‘He was really good, but he looked kind of nutty.’”
The pair went on to perform on just one bill together on 23 April 1977 at California’s Glendale Community College. It’s unknown just how many times the pair crossed paths beyond that… but many musicians have claimed that Rhoads and EVH developed more of a ‘rivalry’ in their later years.
Ozzy Osbourne in particular sensed some competition between the pair. The Black Sabbath legend referenced an archival 1982 Guitar Player clip to prove his point, noting how Eddie claimed “everything [Rhoads] did he learned from me”, and later adding “he was good, but I don’t really think he did anything that I haven’t done”.
“I heard recently that Eddie said he taught Randy all his licks … he never,” Osbourne told Rolling Stone in 2022.
Alongside the strange claim, he also claimed that Rhoads “didn’t have a nice thing to say about Eddie”, either. “Maybe they had a falling out or whatever, but they were rivals,” he said.
The archival Eddie clip was also briefly mentioned in a 2022 documentary, Randy Rhoads: Reflection of a Guitar Icon. One of Rhoads’ friends, Kim McNair, explained: “This was the years of guitar heroes. To a large degree, bands were judged on their guitar player. I think all the guitar players in town kept up on each other.”
The post “Eddie was acting crazy and bouncing off of walls in his underwear. Randy was like, ‘Oh okay… not the best time to meet this guy’”: Quiet Riot’s Kelly Garni says Randy Rhoads didn’t have a rivalry with Eddie Van Halen, rather a “fascination” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
“Steve couldn’t utter a word. John stubbed out cigarettes on the back of his hand”: The 1976 gig that “petrified” the Sex Pistols
![[L-R] Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) and Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols](https://guitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Sex-Pistols-hero-new@2000x1500.jpg)
Unapologetically brash and loaded with attitude, it’s hard to imagine punk’s standard-bearers could suffer pre-performance nerves. But for all their cocksure anti-establishmentism, The Sex Pistols were prone to pre-gig anxiety like anyone else.
As journalist and photographer John Ingham recalls in a new feature in MOJO magazine, there was one gig in particular that struck fear into the hearts of Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock.
Cast your imagination back to 9 July, 1976; the Pistols are gearing up for a gig at London’s 2,100-capacity Lyceum Theatre, supporting Supercharge and The Pretty Things. As Ingham recalls, this was the first time they’d played in a “big space”, and nerves were high.
“What was really strange was that it seemed such an amazingly unimportant gig,” Ingham says. “And they were so absolutely petrified before, backstage. Steve couldn’t talk, he couldn’t utter a word, he had the look of death on his face. To them, it was extremely important. It was the first time they’d played in a big space.
“John was really nervous. I found that strange. It hadn’t occurred to me that they wanted to win people over. That was the night that John stubbed out cigarettes on the back of his hand while he was singing. It frightened me.”
But the four-piece ultimately rose to the occasion: “Up until this point, they were getting better at it, but it was still the same kind of noise…” Ingham continues. “Suddenly there was this major step up in musical ability. Glen was phenomenal, the bass playing was tremendous. Paul was right on the beat. In one night, suddenly they were all just there.”
The Sex Pistols are still active, with a number of shows planned for 2026. However, John Lydon is no longer in the fold (Frank Carter now holds frontman duties), and has documented his somewhat fractured relations with his former bandmates in recent years.
“Come on Mr. Carter, you’re not Johnny Rotten, I am,” he told Frank as the band approached their reunion tour last year, previously saying in reference to his former bandmates: “I am the Pistols, and they’re not.”
More recently, guitarist Steve Jones said he has “nothing but love” for Lydon, saying he’ll “never shut the door” on a reunion, but asserting that he didn’t think “John would have the energy like Frank does”.
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Why metalcore pioneers Converge have returned to bring an end to “data entry” modern metal and show a new generation the power of authenticity
In Converge’s world, things don’t happen by accident – if they say something, they mean it. So, when vocalist Jacob Bannon ushered in the metalcore pioneers’ new record Love is Not Enough by observing that “realism is missing from a lot of modern music”, you knew they planned on doing something about it. “People, especially young people, crave authenticity,” guitarist Kurt Ballou expounds. “The process of recording metal music has been more akin to data entry than playing instruments for quite a long time now – there’s a whole generation who have been raised with this sort of ‘perfect’ music.”
Love is Not Enough is not that. It’s a hulking, febrile thing, alive in all its grit and human imperfections. It is Converge at their most Converge – a band reflecting upon the artistic choices and creative bonds that have underpinned a genre-shaping 35 year run. There are solos on the title track with the head-spinning ferocity of Axe to Fall’s all-timer of an opener Dark Horse, for example, while To Feel Something finds Ballou reinterpreting stabbing, lurching Jane Doe-era carnage from the perspective of someone who’s learned to control the violence at their fingertips. Following on from 2021’s Bloodmoon: I, a collaboration with modern goth icon Chelsea Wolfe, Ben Chisholm, and Cave In’s Stephen Brodsky, it is about uncovering fresh ore in old hills.
“There are songs on Bloodmoon that I barely played guitar on,” Ballou says. “Making Love is Not Enough, that goes back to regular Converge, where we are much more comfortable in our roles. The division of labour is well established in the band and it’s back to being focused on our own stuff. But, also, there’s less space to hide. The guitar ideas are mine, and I’m playing them all. There’s a deliberate lack of collaboration on it. Guitar solos are not my thing, but we’re not having guest musicians here. No one’s playing this solo for me, so I gotta fucking do it. So, you know, I did it.”
Image: Press
Caving In
Recorded at Ballou’s God City facility in Salem, Massachusetts, the album is chiefly a document of a band capable of caving your head in from 10 paces. Bassist Nate Newton and drummer Ben Koller are a rhythm section with an unparalleled track record of unleashing sense-rearranging barrages, while Ballou and Bannon remain a pugilistic pairing pushing each other to scabrous new heights.
If you A-B the studio version of Love is Not Enough’s closer We Were Never The Same against its staging in Converge’s recent Audiotree session, you get a visceral idea of how close they have come to capturing the real thing. “When it comes to recording hardcore and metal my approach is always, ‘What does it feel like to watch this band live?’” Ballou says. “What does that excitement feel like, and can I try to capture that excitement? That’s my goal.”
Ballou is an interesting case study for this stuff, though, because he’s a working producer as well as a gnarly guitar player in a hardcore band. When he’s collaborating on Nails’ latest voyage into the death metal morass or helping Fleshwater assemble molasses-thick shoegaze-pop, his word isn’t law.
In fact, his views on recording music are malleable and driven by the desire to get at what people really want. “In my job, I interact with younger people who are fascinated with analog equipment – they’re taking pictures of their session with point and shoot film cameras,” he continues. “But I don’t want to be a luddite. I don’t want to be too cool for modern techniques.”
“All that technology exists for a reason,” he continues. “Incredible engineering has been done to create amp sims, drum replacements, audio file warping and tuning, and I do use that stuff sometimes when it’s helpful to present the music in the most flattering way. I’m not opposed to it. But I think that one of the things about technology that is important to keep in mind is exercising some restraint.
One of the things about an older style of recording is not so much that tape sounds better than digital, or tube amps sound better than modellers, it’s more that the process of using analog equipment necessitated a certain type of workflow. It didn’t require restraint when you were limited to 24 tracks. That was just what there was, and you had to make it work. Now, you would have to make a choice to limit yourself.”
Tools Of The Trade
That studio-rooted discipline also has interesting parallels with Ballou’s attitude towards his other-other career with God City Instruments (GCI), a boutique outfit producing guitars, basses, pedals and DIY pedal kits – something that grew out of Ballou’s legendary GCI business card, which took the form of an actual PCB (sans components) for his Brutalist Jr circuit.
“My wife does a lot of the order-fulfillment side of that and I QC guitars,” he says. “We’ll get a shipment every three or four months and I’ll spend a few days with them. The company is still pretty small, but it’s manageable. I’m not really trying to grow it – I don’t really want to lose control of it.”
“To double my sales would require more than double of my effort, you know? I think a lot of bands end up in a similar situation,” he adds. “Converge, for example, we have great people that we work with, our fans are awesome, and we can go and play shows just about anywhere in the world. But to play a venue twice the size is more than twice as expensive. We’d be required to have guitar techs and drum techs and lighting techs. The ticket price gets a lot higher and now we’re not doing things on our own terms.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, GCI gear forms the backbone of Ballou’s work on Love is Not Enough. Fitted with their overwound Slug Jammer humbuckers, there are multiple Craftsman models in play, along with a 27.5” scale Deconstructivist baritone that was used to bring the muscle on Distract and Divide, To Feel Something and Amon Amok, a trio of Drop A monsters.
“I’ve also got a really good short-scale Tele with Lindy Fralin pickups,” he notes. “I used that for a bunch of the clean, atmospheric background sounds on Amon Amok. On Force Meets Presence I might have used my First Act Sheena. I can’t remember if I actually did this, or if I just was thinking about doing it, but a lot of that song is rooted on the A string, so to make that clean I might have taken the low E off of the guitar for that whole section.”
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Spreading The Load
While working on Bloodmoon: I, Ballou had to find his place within a guitar sound that he viewed as vibe-based more than “dense or athletic”. Here, the opposite is largely true. But his amp selection process remained the same, with five or six rigs primed for work as he chased a tone. “I used to have a whole bunch of amps running at the same time, hoping to capture the best of all worlds,” he says. “But I’ve come to realise over time that it just flattens whatever cool character each one has.”
With the rhythm sounds oscillating between an early Sparrows Sons model, employed with a Boss OS-2 to accent its articulate, wide-ranging gain, and a GCI Onslaught-assisted Dean Costello HMW, most of the leads were tracked with a first generation Bad Cat Black Cat, paired again with an OS-2 or a GCI Crimson Cock.
“That’s like an NPN Rangemaster,” Ballou says. “It’s really the best for matching a guitar to an amp. If your guitar feels too bright or too dark, or not loud enough, or too loud, by turning a few knobs on that thing, you can make it work.”
What pass for cleans in Converge’s world, meanwhile, were captured on a Traynor YRM-1 that Ballou picked up for $99 in the mid-1990s. “I can, honestly, probably record anything with that amp,” he observes. “I also have a few JMP 2204s, but one of them is from a transitional year when it started getting a little more JCM900-ish. I want to say I have a ‘76 and a ‘79. They’ve obviously been maintained differently over the years, but the newer one is tighter and the older one is creamier. I like them both a lot – that was set up as a pedal platform as I needed different sounds. If a song needs a fuzz part or an HM-2 part, that amp can do it all.”
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Bright Spark
Zooming out, though, something remarkable about the way Love is Not Enough sounds is the warmth and clarity behind its guitars. As a riffer, Ballou is naturally a grimy, aggressive player, meaning that keeping a sense of nuance alive requires deliberate thought. “I’m always pushing the brightness to try to get more clarity,” he says. “But then sometimes you end up with a very chirpy sound, which is not very metal. The OS-2 quells the chirpiness and also starves the bottom end.”
From both a philosophical and practical perspective, Ballou sees his yard as the mid-range. Returning again to the idea of a division of labour, he is happy to leave the sludge to Newton and the splashy stuff to Koller’s cymbals. He’s not trying to grind you to a pulp, he’s trying to punch you in the solar-plexus. “Listen to the classic Slayer records – they don’t have crushing low end or sizzly high end,” he says. “There are great guitar sounds that have that, but we’ve always thought of Converge more as a hard band than a heavy band.”
Converge’s Love Is Not Enough is out February 13 through Deathwish/Epitaph.
The post Why metalcore pioneers Converge have returned to bring an end to “data entry” modern metal and show a new generation the power of authenticity appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.