Myles Kennedy has made no secret over the years that the late Jeff Buckley is one of his biggest musical heroes.

Speaking to MusicRadar in January, the Alter Bridge frontman placed Buckley, alongside Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Stevie Wonder and Ella Fitzgerald on the pantheon of his biggest influences.

“The vocalists I looked to would have been Stevie Wonder, that was probably the very first one, and then Jeff Buckley was a massive influence,” he said, emphasis on massive interviewee’s own. “Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke, together in the ‘90s, were big influences on me. And as the years have gone on – this is going to sound kind of interesting – I love female singers, and there’s just something about Ella Fitzgerald, and I could listen to her forever.”

So in 2019, when Kennedy got the opportunity to perform a cover of Buckley’s Hallelujah, when Alter Bridge played L’Olympia in Paris, using Buckley’s modded 1983 Fender Telecaster, it was officially a big deal. It was the first time the Tele had been played in public since Buckley’s death in 1997. Matt Lucas, of legendary Parisian vintage gear emporium, Matt’s Guitar Store, lent Kennedy it for the occasion.

And in a recent interview with Guitarist, Kennedy admits that it the prospect brought him out in a cold sweat. Sometimes a guitar has too much cultural and cosmic weight to pick up. This he needed to talk himself into.

“Playing Jeff’s guitar was amazing, though I truly didn’t feel worthy of it,” says Kennedy. “I was a little uncomfortable, to be honest. I gradually convinced myself that it was okay. It’s just a guitar that’s part of this incredible history. All I had to do was not taint that history.”

And there is a lot of history. Buckley’s version of Hallelujah was in many/most critics’ opinion the definitive take on Leonard Cohen’s original. “Grace is an album that gave me the same feeling as hearing Eruption,” says Kennedy.

Kennedy’s performance was captured on video for posterity. You can check it out on YouTube [below] and judge for yourself whether he did it justice (1.8mn views, 40k-plus likes, circa 300 dislikes delivered a consensus of sorts that he most definitely did).

As for that tone you’re hearing in the video, Kennedy explains to Guitarist that, like, say, Kirk Hammett’s Greeny Les Paul, there’s something “technically wrong” with the wiring and that gives it the secret sauce.

“It’s just an early-to-mid ’80s Tele, but there’s something weird about how the pickup was wired,” he says. “Apparently, there’s something technically wrong with it, at least from what Matt Lucas explained to me. That’s what gives it that beautiful shimmery sound. It’s all down to this imperfection, which makes it even cooler. When you plug it in, you think, ‘Oh yeah, there’s that sound!’”

The listing on Matt’s Guitar Shop offers some insights as to what made Buckley’s Tele exceptional. After all, a 1983 Telecaster doesn’t necessarily excite a collector in the same way as a Nocaster or ’51 Blackguard would. But this was a little unusual in that it had been modded with a Seymour Duncan Hot Lead Stack, a noiseless pickup based around an Alnico V bar magnet that has a warmer character than your typical Tele bridge pickup. It has a bit more output, too.

The original pickguard had been switched out for a mirrored ‘guard (like Chrissie Hynde's Telecaster, and this had an unusual top-loading six-saddle bridge, which as Matt’s Guitar Store notes, “usually adds some snappiness” to the tone. So, then, a one-off Tele. Perhaps with this being the 75th anniversary of the Telecaster, and Fender having already launched a number of limited run Teles to mark the occasion, maybe we might see an official replica. Who can say?

What we can say is that Buckley changed Kennedy’s life. Speaking to MusicRadar in September 2019, just a couple of months before he performed Hallelujah in Paris, Kennedy explained how Buckley opened him up to a new way of singing.

““Jeff was such an important musical figure in my evolution, especially in the early to mid-90s,” said Kennedy. ““Jeff was such an important musical figure in my evolution, especially in the early to mid ‘90s. Don’t get me wrong, I loved what was happening in Seattle. I’m from the Pacific Northwest and am very proud of all those bands and how much they affected music. But at that stage in my development, I was really trying to figure out how to integrate blues and RnB into what I was doing, to help inspire my own sound… I was just looking for guide posts.

“When Jeff Buckley came out, there was such a level of musicianship and emotive quality to his voice that really appealed to me. He had this angelic sound which I hadn’t heard many male singers utilise. He used a lot of falsetto and soft-spoken ideas, almost more of a feminine side, which I thought was really interesting.”

But Buckley had power, too, and that did not go unnoticed. That sense of dynamic range is something that you can hear in Kennedy’s vocals, too.

“He had this power in his upper register,” added Kennedy. “It was ferocious when he went into those almost Robert Plant-style wails, then he would bring it down into something very soft that would draw you in. It was his sense of dynamics and that overall control over his voice that really appealed to me. Grace is a truly brilliant album… I think we were robbed of a great talent there.”

Alter Bridge’s self-titled album is out now via Napalm Records.

• “Being able to go into a sacred space like that and start the process was a dream come true”: Alter Bridge’s Myles Kennedy and Mark Tremonti on recording at the studio that Eddie Van Halen built
• Burned out recording vocals? Myles Kennedy shares his top for getting the perfect take

If you caught Myles Kennedy live in concert in 2025, you will have seen a bass guitar in action that few people outside of the EVH Gear inner circle have even laid eyes on – a prototype four-string that may be coming soon to a guitar store near you. Some day. But not today.

For now, this bass is owned by Kennedy’s bassist, Tim Tournier, and at last summer’s Norway’s Tons of Rock Festival, he gave us a guided tour of its features, and explained how this was a first.

No one had ever given him an instrument before, but courtesy of his good friend Wolfgang Van Halen, here was this, a one of two prototype EVH Wolfgang bass, custom-built by EVG Gear master builder Chip Ellis.

The other one? That’s owned by Wolfgang, and presumably that’s the relic’d one that we have seen being played live by Mammoth touring bassist Ronnie Ficarro. As Tournier explained, Ficarro has been a willing guinea pig for this EVH bass.

“There’s two earlier versions of this that Ed [Van Halen] was working on for years that then got taken out with Mammoth,” says Tournier. “And the bass player in Mammoth, Ronnie, really put it through its paces – which has been the EVH mantra forever, ‘cos if you’re gonna develop something and put out a product, it needs to go out on the road, be toured, learn everything you can about it, how you can make it better.

“I played it, just at Mammoth show, and fell in love with it, so Wolf and Matt Bruck, who run [the] EVH brand, made this one for me.”

And Tournier is busy putting this one through its paces. It is similarly spec’d to the white prototype. His is finished in gold, matching painted headstock FTW, dual humbuckers and there’s – what’s that? – over-sized selector dial dominating the controls. That’s too cool.

What gets Tournier really excited, however, are the pickups. We’ll let him explain why in the video above, and also explain how a lifelong guitarist ended up on bass, and playing bass for one of rock-and-metal’s blue chip stars.

But then Tournier has done pretty much every other job in music (he's current filling in on guitar for Sevendust while managing Alter Bridge, Creed and guitarist Mark Tremonti’s solo band) so maybe it was just a matter of time before he ended up playing bass with Kennedy.

Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper, Yungblud and more have been confirmed for Tons Of Rock 2026. See Tons Of Rock for ticket details. Myles Kennedy's Art Of Letting Go is out now via Napalm.

• Myles Kennedy on why karaoke “terrifies” him, the secret to a perfect take – and the hardest Guns N’ Roses song to sing live with Slash
• Burned out recording vocals? Myles Kennedy shares his top for getting the perfect take

The thing about being fronting a rock band is that you’ve got to be cerebral enough to write lyrics and record the music and yet dumb enough to actually perform it, to throw yourself out there night after night without a second’s thought.

There is a time when the brain has to be shut down. Instinct takes over. Myles Kennedy knows this only too well, fronting Alter Bridge, playing with Slash and the Conspirators, performing solo.

“Well it’s either a talent or just too dumb not to know not to step into the arena, dumb enough to step into the ring,” he says. “You’ve got to be dumb enough not to know when to quit.”

Kennedy is joining us in an ante room in a west London hotel ahead of the launch of Alter Bridge’s eponymous studio album, which is out on 9 January through Napalm.

He and Tremonti have told us all about the surreal, once-in-a-lifetime experience of recording at 5150 Studios, and now Kennedy is going to talk all things vocals, how he takes care of it, the singers who influenced the most, and how he and Alter Bridge producer, Michael ‘Elvis’ Baskette found the secret to getting the perfect take in the studio.

Oh, and while he was with us, we had to ask which of W. Axl Rose’s vocal performances were the hardest to replicate when out onstage with Slash.

Was there a moment when you thought that you had found your own identity as a vocalist?

“Oh, man. It took a long time! [Laughs] Because I think I was listening to too much of any specific artist and then it ends up rubbing off [on you]. I think I finally felt it about 10 years ago. I don’t know if I could pinpoint a certain moment but I thought, ‘Okay, this is who I am.’ And it really did take a long time. Some people find it in their early 20s, on their first few records – some people find it even earlier than that. For me, I had to do a bit of experimenting.”

Speaking to Mark, he says there is always something else to explore. Is that how you see it, that’s there’s more to learn with guitar over time?

“Definitely more on guitar. The vocal element? I feel that I am content with it. I don’t know if I am going to chase that down. I want to chase down more songs. You still want to write the song, right? Which I personally feel I will never achieve.”

When you do it is time to give up.

“Yeah, absolutely. If you think you’ve written The Song, you should give it up. But as a guitar player there is so much I want to learn and evolve with, without a doubt.”

Which singers have been the biggest influence on your voice?

“The vocalists I looked to would have been Stevie Wonder, that was probably the very first one, and then Jeff Buckley was a massive influence. Like, Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke, together in the ‘90s, were big influences on me. And as the years have gone on – this is going to sound kind of interesting – I love female singers, and there’s just something about Ella Fitzgerald, and I could listen to her forever.”

How do you keep your voice in shape on the road?

“It is a life of no fun! [Laughs] It’s the lonely, lonely life of a singer. You sing and you go, you get to the bus, you shut up, and you get to your bunk and you get as much sleep as you can. And you don’t party. You don’t talk a lot.

“I think a lot of people assume I am kind of standoffish when I am touring because I am not talking. Some guys have a real fortitude that way, who just talk all day, and do press, and they can still do a great show, but the way my voice is, maybe because I am accessing so much of the range, it just gets real finicky so I have to put it away.”

You park yourself in the upper limits of your range – that’s demanding on the voice.

“Yeah, it is demanding – especially the older you get.”

Has it ever failed you?

“Oh, sure! Yeah.”

How do you get through that?

“With maximum amounts of stress! [Laughs] It has failed mainly due to getting ill. That’s the thing. As far as the technique and all that, I have figured out how to use it, how to utilise that and get through the tour, but if you get a respiratory infection there is only so much you can do.”

This is related to what we were talking about earlier about recording at 5150 Studios, and capturing the live energy, but how do you bring that into the vocal booth? Because the two scenarios are quite different.

“Yeah, they are different, and it’s interesting because the way I do it now, let’s say with vocals, that’s one thing where Elvis has really figured this out for my voice – he knows my voice better than any producer I have worked with because we have done so many records together – and it’s the idea of, ‘Right, we’re going to sing this down, we’re going to get it to open up, make sure everything sounds right, with preamps setup for the volume, blah blah blah.’

“But one thing we do is we’ll hit a certain part really hard, give it maximum intensity, and then let it rest for a few minutes. Instead of just going, ‘Okay, we’re going to do three passes, just give it a 100 per cent, and then we’ll put a comp together and take it from there.’ What we do is we’ll focus on a section, know what we need to do, and that way we are in and out of there – sometimes in an hour-and-a-half! – and we’re done with the track.

“It used to be, you’d be turning it in, just singing it down, singing it down, singing down and singing it down, and then the voice would get worn, it would get tired. Instead, you keep your voice fresh all the time. You just have a finite amount of power and pitch control, and once that stops with the human voice, okay, just put it away.”

What is the last song you sang at karoake?

“Karaoke terrifies me. The last time I did karaoke was in 2008. I think it was on my birthday, and we were on tour, and Mark and the guys got me very drunk.

“In fact this was probably one of the last times I drank on the road because they just obliterated me. We went to a bar down the road from the gig, I sang Here I Go Again by Whitesnake… And there I went! That was the last time I ever A) sang at karaoke, and B) got inebriated while on tour.”

You have to sing Guns N’ Roses songs and that isn’t easy with Axl, because he has this natural drive in his voice.

“He does. He’s got that overdrive, and the range! Incredible range.”

So, what is the hardest GNR track to sing live?

“I would say the hardest one for me is probably My Michelle, just because it’s so intense. But man, I love that song. Oftentimes, the songs I love the most are the most difficult to pull off. That one is definitely a challenge.”

What is your best vocal performance?

“Oh man! That’s a good question. My best vocal performance? I’m still waiting for that one. [Laughs]”

What like was it like tracking vocals at 5150 Studios?

“Interestingly enough, I didn’t track vocals at 5150. We finished guitars and vocals in Florida. And I will say there, there was a [Sheffield Labs] microphone that I borrowed from Mark that he got from Paul Reed Smith, which has been saying forever, ‘You gotta try this mic!” And sure enough, this mic is magical. And Elvis changed his preamps.

“He got a new console, and we basically ran through a Fairchild-esque compressor, that has all the sonic hallmarks of a Fairchild, and whatever that chain is, man, it just made it so much easier to track vocals because you can hear every detail. It helped me with the pitch. It helped me with everything.”

Red light fever. Do you suffer from it and how do you cope with it?

“No. I think I’ve been making records for so long that I am very comfortable in the studio., I don’t want to say too comfortable but I used to get red light fever as a young artist. I don’t really get it [now] but you know when I do get red light fever, it’s any sort of live television thing.”

Jimmy Kimmel.

“Yeah, like, big time! Totally.”

Are there any lyrics that you have been embarrassed by?

“Oh man, I can definitely tell you there have been moments as a performer that I have been embarrassed by, just by the way I was presenting myself. I went through a phase there, right after 2010, I was just trying to find how to present myself differently from when I was performing with Alter Bridge and Slash, and I kinda had some missteps there. Poor wardrobe decisions! [Laughs]”

• Alter Bridge’s self-titled eighth studio album available to pre-order and is out on 9 January 2026 through Napalm Records.

Recording an album isn’t easy on anyone. It’s a marathon process. It’s hard enough on the guitar players, trying over and over to nail the perfect take, but it can be brutal on vocalists. There is only so much load the voice can handle.

Myles Kennedy knows this only too well. Vocal burnout is real. The Alter Bridge frontman and co-conspirator of Slash says it takes monastic discipline to keep his voice in working order when on tour.

“It is a life of no fun! [Laughs] It’s the lonely, lonely life of a singer,” he says. “You sing and you go, you get to the bus, you shut up, and you get to your bunk and you get as much sleep as you can. And you don’t party. You don’t talk a lot.”

In the vocal booth, it requires a more calculated approach, and over time he and Alter Bridge’s long-standing producer, Michael ‘Elvis’ Baskette, have got it down to a tee.

It wasn’t always like this.

“You’d be turning it in, just singing it down, singing it down, singing down and singing it down, and then the voice would get worn, it would get tired,” says Kennedy.

The secret is to pick your moments. Baskette knows when to push Kennedy’s voice, and crucially when to rest it. It’s all about maximising how much energy is left in it.

“You just have a finite amount of power and pitch control, and once that stops with the human voice, okay, just put it away,” says Kennedy.

Some producers might ask for a best of three then let the singer rest. The takes can be comped together to see what works. But Baskette is a a little more exacting about what he wants from Kennedy. They get the vocal engineering down cold so everything is all set up.

“It’s the idea of, ‘Right, we’re going to sing this down, we’re going to get it to open up, make sure everything sounds right, with preamps setup for the volume, blah blah blah…’”

They go over the song, take it section by section, and let it rip.

“Elvis has really figured this out for my voice – he knows my voice better than any producer I have worked with because we have done so many records together,” says Kennedy. “One thing we do is we’ll hit a certain part really hard, give it maximum intensity, and then let it rest for a few minutes.

State-Sanctioned Killings for Drug Offences in East and Southeast AsiaInstead of just going, ‘Okay, we’re going to do three passes, just give it a 100 per cent, and then we’ll put a comp together and take it from there.’ What we do is we’ll focus on a section, know what we need to do, and that way we are in and out of there – sometimes in an hour-and-a-half! – and we’re done with the track.”

Alter Bridge recorded the lion’s share of their new studio album at 5150 Studios, in Los Angeles, the recording facility built from the ground up by the late Eddie Van Halen, which is now owned by his son, Wolfgang.

With Wolfgang a close friend of the bend – playing in Tremonti’s solo band for a while and sharing management – he extended an invite that no one in Alter Bridge was going to think twice about.

“It was literally, the minute we walked in the door, it was very Wayne’s World. ‘We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!’” said Kennedy. “Being able to go into a sacred space like that and start the process was a dream come true. I think Mark and I can both testify to that.”

You can read about Alter Bridge’s experience of recording at 5150 Studios here.

• Alter Bridge’s self-titled eighth studio album available to pre-order and is out on 9 January 2026 through Napalm Records.

It might be one of the most famous recording facilities in the world but no one gets to record at 5150 Studios, Los Angeles, unless your surname is Van Halen, and yet, somehow, Alter Bridge did just that.

Their forthcoming self-titled studio album, scheduled for a 9 January 2026 release through Napalm, was tracked there under the watchful eye of producer Michael ‘Elvis’ Baskette, with the band finishing the record off at Baskette’s studio in Florida.

Frontman/guitarist Myles Kennedy and guitarist Mark Tremonti can barely contain themselves at the thought of it, recording in the same studio that the late Eddie Van Halen built from the ground up, where all Van Halen albums from 1984 onwards were recorded, This, says Kennedy, is a “sacred space”, so when they got an invite from longtime friend Wolfgang Van Halen to work there, there was only going to be one answer.

“Y’know, look, [laughs] being able to go into a sacred space like that and start the process was a dream come true,” he says. “I think Mark and I can both testify to that.”

“We planned to do preproduction there,” explains Tremonti. “It was an opportunity that came up. Wolfgang was nice enough to invite us there – because Wolfie is pretty much a brother of ours now. We’ve had such a long relationship. We love hanging out. We’d go to 5150, he’d come hang out with us, we’d go out have dinner with him, and he’d let us into his sacred studio.”

Alter Bridge and Van Halen go way back. Back in his Creed days, Tremonti supported Van Halen, with Eddie Van Halen famously gifting him one of his Wolfgang signature guitars. Wolfgang, the musician, played bass guitar on Tremonti’s solo project, and his band, Mammoth WVH, have spent months on the road with Alter Bridge, with both bands sharing management.

The enormity of Alter Bridge tracking an album in the facility that Eddie Van Halen built is not lost on manager, Tim Tournier, who knocks on wood that it might happen again.

Both Kennedy and Tremonti had been to 5150 before. This was Kennedy’s second visit. “It’s much different knowing you’re going to work there,” he says.

Tremonti already had some pretty good memories of 5150.

“I saw Van Halen play there, which was pretty nuts,” he says. “Wolfie was nice enough to call me when I was in LA and say, ‘Hey! You wanna come see Van Halen practise tomorrow morning?’ So he drove me to 5150. It was awesome.”

This would have been late 2011 or early 2012, when Van Halen were tracking their final studio album, A Different Kind Of Truth.

“They played the whole record,” adds Tremonti. “Roth wasn’t there. It was just Alex and Eddie [and Wolfgang]. But they played the whole new record.”

With Kennedy and Tremonti in the inner sanctum, ground zero for the Brown Sound, where some of the most iconic guitar parts and tones were put together, it begs the question whether they got to play Frankenstein.

“No, no!” laughs Tremonti. “We didn’t want to push it! ‘Can we play this on the record!?’ No, we respected the space. It wasn’t something that we deserve!”

“No, we’re not worthy!” says Kennedy. “It was literally, the minute we walked in the door, it was very Wayne’s World. ‘We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!’”

But when you press play on this new Alter Bridge record, you can be sure that 5150 – and Eddie Van Halen’s designs – left an imprint on its sound. Kennedy says the eponymous EVH Gear 5150 III 50-watt tube amp head was the secret sauce in the album’s reference quality rhythm guitar tone. Kennedy’s signature PRS signature model sounded all kinds of godly when played through the head.

“I don’t know if it was a prototype but it was a 5150 III, 50-watt version, which I just really grew fond of,” says Kennedy. “That amp turned out to be a pretty big part of the sound of this record. From the starting riff of Silent Divide, you can really hear the characteristic of that amp blended with my [Diezel] VH4.”

Looking at the pictures from the studio floor, there were other amps in the mix, too. Kennedy mentions his VH4, but there’s Tremonti’s 100-watt signature head from PRS, the MT-100, feating into a slanted Marshall 4X12 cabinet.

The EVH III in white vinyl pulls focus, but we can’t help noticing a more modest amp in white vinyl, the Positive Grid Spark Mini, that looks like it is being used by bassist Brian Marshall. What's that doing? Who knows. But it was the 5150 that was taking the starring role here, and Tremonti said it even made him rethink what he was looking for from an amp.

“As far as the amps go, that 5150 III, it made me reassess 50-watt amps. I was never a big 50-watt amp kinda guy, and I have the 5150 100-watt version and the 50-watt version, but there was something special about that 50-watt version,” he says. “I’ve just recently bought a 50-watt Dumble. It’s my first 50-watt Dumble, and versus the 100-watt, it’s got a different thing.

“It’s an Overdrive Special. It was very early. It’s serial number 49, so it’s very early. The first Dumbles didn’t have two master controls so you couldn’t get two live tones out of it, meaning you couldn’t set one channel at a different volume.

“But those 50-watt versions? There’s something about that 5150 III, the 6L6 that we used.”

Kennedy’s the same. He preferred 100-watters, too.

“Well I thought that the 50-watt wouldn’t carry the weight of the 100, it wouldn’t stand side by side in an arena or something, but it does, it does carry the weight, and it just has more bite,” he says “There is something in the upper mids that’s very unique about that amp, that really seem to work in the chain.”

Is that unique certain something in the upper mids an Eddie Van Halen quality? That kind of aerobic drive and harmonic response? “Oh yeah,” says Kennedy, and he advises guitarists to concentrate their efforts on nailing these battleground frequencies when dialling in a tone. Get them right and the rest will fall into place.

“That’s where we sit as guitarists,” he says. “It’s funny, guitar players are like, ‘Oh, the bottom end!?’ Well, once you put it in context, in the mix, a lot of that is getting drowned out by the kick drum and the bass guitar anyway. Upper mids are where you’re going to sit so you want them to be [right]. Wherever those upper frequencies are, you want them to cut, and also you want the right type of cut.”

Alter Bridge’s self-titled eighth studio album available to pre-order and is out on 9 January 2026 through Napalm Records.

Myles Kennedy and Devin Townsend team up for a UK and Ireland tour this month - beginning in Glasgow on 24 November. And ahead of the tour they’ve been talking to MusicRadar about their gear choices.

The gear they swear by seems to fall in polar opposite categories – Myles sticking with the more traditional approach of his T-style PRS signature into Diezel handwired valve amps, and Devin with his Fishman Fluence and Evertune bridge-loaded Framus signature feeding into his trusty digital Axe-FX.

Gear-wise, you’re quite different…

Devin: “I like digital because I’m pragmatic when working. There’s so much that needs to be done in a consistent and articulate way. It’s the best solution for how I work, and it works in a way that I find very elegant. That being said, my favourite amp I’ve got is a 1964 Silverface Champ which sounds great with my really old Telecaster. I have a Bad Cat combo that’s also really nice, too. I like it all. My connection to gear specifically from a compositional aspect comes down to what’s the most efficient.”

And digital gear is certainly that.

Myles: “I would have to agree. And it’s definitely working for you, Devin. I was listening to your new album wondering what you were using to get those sounds. And it’s all amp emulation?”

Devin: “It is. But the digital gear is factored into the compositions. On the last couple of records I worked with a producer for the first time in a while. He was convinced we just needed to find the right amplifier. We rented this really nice studio and brought in 12 different boutique heads with a line of cabinets which we isolated going into the Neve. And what I realised is that the sonic footprint of a real amplifier is so full-range that it might not work as well for me. Because of my compositions, a lot of it comes down to how things slot into each frequency.”

So you find real amps can almost sound too big?

Devin: “Precisely. The space where vocals, cymbals and certain synths exist can get invaded by the overwhelming amount of harmonic content coming from a real amp. When recording an actual amplifier, we started having to use high pass and low pass filters. All that was left was this certain midrange that wasn’t congruent with the composition. But when I used digital, after all this rigmarole – because fortunately I’d recorded DIs – the sonic footprint of my Axe-FX presets were like a smaller version of a real amp. They would fit into the frequency range and sound better within the music than an actual amp. It’s not that digital sounds better. It’s just that real amps have a lot of irreverent frequencies for my compositions. A lot of it doesn’t work well with what I do.”

Myles: “That makes total sense. Because of the density of your productions, everything has to have its place.”

But on Myles’ solo albums there’s more space for guitars, right?

Myles: “Yeah! With what I’m doing, especially with this new solo record, it was done as a power trio. There was all that space that needed to be filled by an analogue amp. But yeah, I’d never thought about what Devin just said until now.”

Devin: “It was trauma-inspired, too because we had to really try everything. I didn’t want to assume one was better than the other. It’s subjective of course and per case. Music with orchestras and synths will have different requirements to something like my Casualties Of Cool project, which I did with that Fender Princeton, my Telecaster and a single microphone. It sounded beautiful for that stuff, but yeah... it’s case-by-case. One thing I noticed about your record, and it’s an odd thing to say, but your guitars on some of the intros sounded so in tune. I was so thankful!”

Myles: “For sure! A lot of that is Elvis [producer Michael ‘Elvis’ Baskette]. He makes me tune so much I feel like I’m not even making a record, I’m just tuning guitars!”

Devin: “Have you tried the Evertune system?”

Myles: “No...”

Devin: “Okay, so every guitar I have has that system. It’s a physical set of springs that you retrofit onto your guitars. I’ve got them on Telecasters, Les Pauls, everything. The guy who created it is called Cosmos [Lyles] and there’s no person I know more fitting of that name. You set your guitar intonated and in tune, then lock it with an Allen key. You can fly anywhere, play outside in a storm or bend to the point where it should be screwing up. Brother, I never tune in the studio anymore! When recording, you just tune once. It has a different feel for leads, granted. So when I’m doing solos, I might use a regular bridge.”

Myles Kennedy and Devin Townsend team up for a UK and Ireland tour this month - beginning in Glasgow on 24 November and ending in Dublin on 6 December. And ahead of the tour, they got together with MusicRadar to talk about their mutual admiration and their approach to songwriting.

Myles is performing on these dates with his regular solo band, while Devin will be doing a solo acoustic set.

Devin: “Having the opportunity to strip back to a single guitar, an echo unit and my voice is fun. If the composition is sound unto itself, then in theory it should work regardless how it’s delivered.”

Myles: “Like Devin says, a good song will transcend. You can just play it on piano or an acoustic guitar, and it shouldn’t be difficult to reimagine in that sense. If you have the right chord progression and melody, it shouldn’t be hard. It’s all about the marriage of melody, what’s going on harmonically underneath and, of course, the lyrics. If it works stripped down, I don’t think it should be difficult, just go with it.”

Devin: “A lot of how I write in general is just me and a guitar. I often use echo to imply orchestration. For years I’ve used echo with a huge amount of feedback, something like 80 or 90 per cent repeat with a 420-millisecond delay. As a result of that, when you’re playing, you will hear how the section you are working on interacts with the past. Harmonically, the collisions that occur in the echoes is where I find a lot of the orchestral ideas.”

Myles: “That’s precisely what I love about Devin! There’s the magic. You take the twists and turns, and it’s the unpredictability that I love. You have a certain sense of humour in your performances, and in your songs at times, but what’s beautiful is that you can back it up with this genius level of talent. You can do this country thing and then go into this crazy heavy middle section that has blastbeats, or whatever the kids call it. That’s what makes me go ‘This is awesome!’ because I really didn’t expect it.”

Devin: “It’s funny, because I first heard of Myles when somebody directed me to a performance of him playing acoustic and singing. I remember thinking how rare it was to find a musician who could effortlessly project everything so well. His voice and ability to articulate through the guitar is special. It’s hard to put into words, but it’s the kind of thing that makes me feel: that guy is a legitimately natural musician and I believe him!”

Myles: “I discovered Devin’s Lightwork record and I was totally floored! For a long time, it was my go-to. It was a perfect combination, where it spoke to me but I also felt like I could learn things.”

Devin: “I was listening to Myles’ new album [The Art Of Letting Go] recently, and there’s an effortlessness to your songwriting, vocals and guitar work that resonates with who you are as a human being. There’s a connection there that’s exceptionally rare. The thing that I found so alluring about it is how real and true it is. That’s what I’m looking for when I’m participating with music. Is this person coming from a place of authenticity? In Myles’ case, yes! His stuff is shockingly connected. I’m in awe of it because I don’t sense that in my own music – so much of it comes from force of will and just effort...”

Myles: “Well, I gotta tell you that I fooled you royally because I’ve worked very hard to pull it off like that. But the goal has always been to make it sound effortless or at least more natural.”

Devin: “When I hear each part in your songs, I’m sat there thinking ‘That’s exactly how it should go!’ The way the pre-chorus works into the chorus is always perfect. You must have some musical Feng Shui going on there! It’s like the obstructions don’t exist. When I get into the flow, it’s the opposite. I struggle with linear passages – as in making each section flow and make sense. Instead, I have 17 different ideas and put them into the dryer. By the end it’s this weird amalgamation of it all. I have to be careful in the state of flow, because it very rarely leads to logic.”

Devin Townsend is supporting Myles Kennedy on a UK and Ireland tour this month - and while they both were into heavy metal in their formative years, they had very different experiences when they were learning how to sing.

“I grew up as a metal kid,” Myles says. “You had Rob Halford [Judas Priest] and people like that. There was a big thing going on with rock singers. But funnily enough, the singers I was trying to emulate early on were all R&B singers like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye.

“I studied singing with this guy called Ron Anderson. I took about 18 lessons, he was this amazing teacher based in LA. He showed me these techniques which came from opera singers, though I obviously applied them in a different way.”

Devin admits that his formal training was less successful.

“I went to a vocal coach in LA called Roger Love,” he says. “But I only went to him twice. I’d just started working with Steve Vai and for the first lesson Roger asked me to sing, so I did. And he told me if I carried on like that, I would f**k my voice up within a year.

“Everything that I was doing was not sustainable. So he was trying to teach me better techniques and I was so obstinate or engrossed in my own style I didn’t connect with it. I carried on singing the way I always did. It’s been 30 years and I’m still here!”

Devin also reveals that Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell was a huge inspiration for him - although not, perhaps, for the right reasons.

“In the ’80s I loved Operation: Mindcrime by Queensrÿche. All that over-the-top metal stuff was a big deal. But Jane’s Addiction was really big for me. That guy [Farrell] was hitting wrong notes with such authority that I just fell in love with it!"

Devin continues: “It’s the same reason I love K.K. Downing [lead guitarist] from Judas Priest so much. He was slightly out of tune but it had echo on it. So it sounded really antagonistic like ‘Yeah, we’re gonna play that note and it’s going to echo for a long time!’ That really influenced me.”

Myles Kennedy and Devin Townsend kick off their UK and Ireland tour in Glasgow on 24 November

Slash and a stack: they just go together, right? But that doesn't mean he's not open to new ways to get the job done in the studio, and even open new sonic possibilities. And in a new interview with fellow six-stringer Ola Englund for the latter's Coffee With Ola series he's detailed how he likes to use guitar plugins for recording.

"So the Fractal thing, I haven't had any reason to go there," he says of amp modelling processors. "But plugins I use all the time because in the studio when you're doing stuff that doesn't necessarily have to be  'the Marshall sound' or whatever, you can get really interesting sounds from plugins and do a lot of unique things."

Their appeal for Slash goes outside of his familiar work in Guns N' Roses, Myles Kennedy And The Conspirators and his new blues solo album, Orgy Of The Damned. 

"I write music for this thing called Halloween Horror Nights in Hollywood [a Universal Studios event], so when I'm doing that sometimes I use a guitar synthesizer, sometimes I use plugins – anything but just your standard stock guitar sound. So I am familiar with that stuff but that said, I've been using that Magnatone amp [XXX] and I've just designed a new amp with those guys – a 100-watt amp."

He's referring to his snakeskin-finished signature model. Further proof that Slash's heart still has a valve glowing inside.

"I love working with an amplifier because there is something, maybe it's old school, but there is something pure about the way the speakers react with the sound in the cabinet and all that kind of stuff."

In the video chat above, Ola himself agrees that "you can't replicate that with a plugin" – using the old 'movement of the air' observation many players cite to describe the tangible experience of playing with traditional valve amps and cabs. Whatever you think of that, Slash has some interesting opinions to share about the experience of using a 'traditional' rig with in-ear monitors.

"A funny thing about the amplifier is live I'm using amps and all that, but I'm also using in-ear monitors," he explains. "That changes the whole thing and I can't stand them."

Alas, they're a necessary compromise for the guitarist.

"I use them because especially with singers… it works for everybody, it's very convenient. So you're working with a [guitar] sound that isn't necessarily 'real' and it's really hard for me, and playing-wise you're searching and searching.

"I've been tweaking them like crazy," Slash says on his in-ear setup. "So I've been working with [Ultimate Ears founder] Jerry Harvey to make them so that they're a little bit more pleasing tone-wise to the ear. Because the first ones I had I said, 'How can anybody use these? It's awful'. It's very direct, it's very brittle… I had a show the other night in Paris and my in-ears went out. So I plugged them out and thought, I'll listen to the house [mix] but the house was too out front. This happened during a song called Wicked Stone – there's an extended guitar solo.

"So I'm out the front doing a guitar solo and this happens and I can't stop. So I played the whole rest of the song no being able to hear – just going off my imagination of what it sound like in my head. So that was an in-ear thing, I was like, 'Fuck I hate these things' but they're a necessary evil."

For Slash his experience of using in-ears live "almost defeats the purpose" of using valve amps and traditional guitar cabs onstage. "Even though what the people are hearing out front is genuinely coming out of a microphone in front of a cabinet, what you're playing to is something else entirely."

His Conspirators bandmate Myles Kennedy has had a much more positive experience with in-ears as a singer-guitarist. "I don't know how people can perform without them because it really is such a game changer," the Alter Bridge man told us in 2022. "And not only does it protect your ears but it'll help you perform better. Mark [Tremonti] is a good example; hearing his vocals now that he uses in-ears versus when he was just using wedges. He can hear his pitch much better now he doesn't have to push as hard. It's just a total total game-changer so I would highly recommend it."

Myles was also keen to stress their advantages for all live performers – even those of us who aren't playing arenas anytime soon.

"You don't have to be playing the enormodome to use in-ears," he added. "If you're playing just a small club you should absolutely be using ears because you will not only hear yourself better, you're gonna save your hearing. Unless you crank them up too loud. Be careful of that because you can actually do more damage if you're not careful and you want to get lost in the moment and get the adrenaline rush of cranking it up to 10. That's very bad. Uncle Myles says no!"

• Check out the full interview above. Slash' new blues album, Orgy Of The Damned, is out 17 May. 

How many rock songs from the last five years can guitarists say are modern classics? It’s a tricky one – the passage of time creates that vintage. And yet, it became quickly apparent that the title track from Alter Bridge's second album was destined for that accolade. 

Composition, atmosphere, emotion – Blackbird has got it all, with one of the greatest rock guitar solos of the last 10 years as the heart. Its significance is not lost on the band.

“That song is special in many ways,” its co-writer, Alter Bridge’s singer and guitarist Myles Kennedy, told this writer in 2011. “I’m sure in years from now it’s something I’ll look back on as being a crowning achievement as a writer. We all feel that way in the band.”

The song came late in the sessions for Alter Bridge’s 2007 second album, which it would give its name to. It was a record that saw Myles contribute guitar to the band for the first time and work more closely as a writer with guitarist Mark Tremonti than before.

“It was our most collaborative song at that point,” Myles noted, “and that’s one of the things that draws me to that song – we were able to capture these moments. The way we were feeding off each other was like we were capturing lightning in a bottle. As a musician and a writer, those are the moments that keep you going – it’s like a drug. It will forever be etched in my memory as a special moment.”

The positivity of this writing dynamic contrasts with the mood of the music. Blackbird’s mournful atmosphere is set from the beginning by the fingerpicked verse part – a thumb and two-finger technique that has Tremonti’s hallmark all over it. The former Creed guitarist reveals it was the starting point for the writing session: “I’d been throwing it around for a while and I really loved it – it had such a sad classical feel to it.”

From there, the creative ball was rolling – even through an initial stumbling block. “We were all at rehearsals, and me and Myles were trying to come up with a chorus. We’ve always had trouble coming up with big choruses that are in a 6/8 feel. So we went into separate rooms at the rehearsal pad, and Myles came running back in with the chorus. We all loved it, and ran with it.”

The collaborative spirit made the song’s brooding bridge effortless… “Myles had a musical part and I had a part,” Mark explained. “We just stacked them on top of each other and they sounded great!” 

But the feeling of fate aligning in triumph at the time also had a tragic side that resonates sincerely and universally. It helps lift the song to classic status. Kennedy’s vocal and lyrics, and the subject matter they address, match the dark power of the music. “As we got to that point musically, I had a friend I’d known for a long time that was passing away,” Myles explained. “And I remember the lyrics came pretty quick because it was just capturing that moment. I wanted him to find his peace and he did. He passed away within days of completing that song.”

“It’s such a universal theme: loss and death,” he added, “so I think that’s part of the reason so many people gravitate towards that song; because we’ve all gone through it, and we’re all going to continue to go through it.”

When it came to recording the core of Blackbird, the duo lent on faithful tone tools – Tremonti’s signature PRS and Myles’ since-retired workhorse McCarty, dubbed ‘The Mule’. The singer would continue to use the Diezel Herbert live he utilised on the album with a Mesa/Boogie Mk IV, while Tremonti recalled his favoured Triple Rectifier for rhythm, adding a Bogner Ecstasy for the leads.

The emotive heart of Blackbird is lifted by its solo section – an alliance of the pair’s distinct lead approaches that finds them realising the potential of the two-man solo in a way few rock players do in the post-Hotel California era. Mark was the instigator of taking on the challenge as a duo…

“I remember from the moment we realised what kind of a guitar player Myles was, we tried to really push that to the forefront and show his skill on the guitar, because I felt that it was a secret weapon,” observed Mark. 

“For a band not to have a player of his calibre even touch a guitar on the first record, to come out blazing on the next record would really shock people – and give it that ‘wow’ factor. We felt it was a great moment for our two styles because he took the part where he could really follow the chord changes and throw his knowledge of his feel and phrasing into that then my more aggressive lead style back to back with that. It was a good combination.”

A poll in 2011 by Guitarist magazine saw Blackbird voted the greatest solo of all time – a controversial decision that saw the band’s fanbase rally behind them. Nevertheless, it highlighted that this is a solo that resonates with many – and that will only grow with the passing of time. 

“Once we had it all arranged, we all looked at each other and it was one of those hairs-standing-up-on-your-arms moments,” remembered Mark in 2011. “That was the point we were ready to record the album – we felt that it was complete at that moment. And I think that even after this last record we’ve made, we still think Blackbird’s our best song.”

• "I don't know how people can perform without them because it really is a game-changer" – Myles Kennedy on using in-ears and how he faces the most underrated challenge in guitar playing

I'm very pleased to see Rick Beato featuring Big Wreck's Ian Thornley on his YouTube channel. The word 'underrated' is bandied around a lot but the breadth of talent and musical knowledge Thornley possesses as a songwriter, vocalist and guitarist is immense. He's a Canadian rock treasure, but as he reveals to Beato, he really works hard at it and his live warmup sounds borderline punishing.

His vocal prep alone is two hours before each show – an hour less than his friend and Alter Bridge singer/guitarist Myles Kennedy but still significant. Indeed it was meeting Kennedy in the late '90s that seemed to inspire Thornley to step up his warmup game – and start using in-ear monitors.

"Myles was the first guy I ever saw with in-ears," reveals Thornley. "We became fast friends in like '98 and I'd never heard anyone sing like that, I've never heard anyone warm-up their voice. He helped me do a lot of stuff. 

"The in-ear thing, and how he was singing – he had a little mixer behind him for himself. He was doing all these weird noises in the van before a show. I'm like, 'What are you doing in there?' He says, 'I'm warming up'. Myles is pretty much top of the pile as far as rock n' roll singers go. right now – you're not gonna get much better than that. And one of my favourite people – and a ripping guitar player."

That's something they have in common, but any notion that Thornley has done the work as a guitar player is, to coin a Big Wreck song, blown wide open when he reveals how in-depth his guitar practice routine is.

"All the time", Thornley says of warm-ups, as he starts playing a repeating alternate part on one string: "The pick is in contact with the string the whole time," he explains. It seems monotonous… tiresome to play even. But it's essential. "It helps things get dialled," he says. 

First he'll loosen up with alternate picked lines and strumming but the real work is the focus on timing. And frankly we're surprised how focussed he gets: "I'll get a metronome going and I'll divide it by quarters through triplets. Keeping things really tight.

"On the road it starts with all that stuff, then I'll start working towards specific things depending on what our setlist is," he explains. This is where Thornley is over-preparing on purpose and it seems to make very good sense.

"A Million Days is a pretty hustley solo," he says of its difficulty. "I think it's about 130-131bpm, so if I'm doing 6th note triplets at 131 I want to [practice] 16th note triplets at 136 [bpm]. [Then there's] more in the tank and 131 feels like a breeze. 

"I just want to make sure everything's covered and then I'll rip certain things that are in certain songs – any of the tougher stuff… I just want to make sure it's all dialled. It's mental as much as it is physical for me."

So that's a structured extensive vocal warmup and a separate guitar warmup before every show. Mostly…

"All that being said, some of my favourite shows have been when we got messed up at the border," adds Thornley. "We had a show in Detroit and we couldn't make it and it was like, 'Oh man' and I'm staring at the record company person who made me cross the border to do a radio thing [in Windsor, Canada]… it was not that long ago.

"I was like, 'We shouldn't do a border crossing before a show, everyone knows that'. Because you never know what's gonna happen – you might get the jelly finger or you might end up in a line-up that's gonna last forever."

But Thornley gave in to the record label's request that he do a radio interview back in Canada before the show in Detroit, USA, but he hit gridlock trying to get back.  

"We finally get across the border, and our set wasn't that long – I think we were opening. It went from 45 to 20 minutes [because they were late]. I got out of the car and ran onstage but it was one of my favourites, because there was no time to think, no time to prepare… just get out of the car, run, guitar on… there's something to be said for just being dropped in the middle of a rock n' roll show."

• Ian Thornley talks Secrets, guitar gear and nearly joining Velvet Revolver

As one of Slash’s co-conspirators and a core member of the Mammoth WVH touring band, Frank Sidoris is arguably one of the hardest-working axe men on the scene right now. Most days, this SG-loving, rock and roll fanatic can be found playing some of the biggest stages in the world next to the most prominent names in the business. From shredding alongside Slash and Wolfgang Van Halen to jamming with childhood idols, Alice Cooper and Alex Lifeson, Frank has legitimately lived most guitar players' wildest dreams – something that isn’t lost on the Vegas-based guitar-slinger. 

We caught up with Frank while he was on a short break between touring with Mammoth WVH and starting rehearsals with Slash and the gang, who are due to hit the road in a few weeks for The River Is Rising – Rest Of The World tour. 

Frank lifts the lid on his current live rig and the pieces of gear he simply couldn’t live without. We also discuss everything from the time Slash surprised him with his dream guitar to his deep love of Orange amps and what he believes has contributed to the longevity of Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. 

So if you want to know what pieces of gear you need to get your hands on to become a well-travelled and highly in-demand professional guitar player just like Frank – and you need another reason to wish Slash was your best mate – then read on. 

I thought it would be great to start with a peek behind the curtain of your current live rig. As a professional guitarist playing alongside some of the biggest names in the industry, can you give us the essential pieces of gear you couldn’t live without?  

"As a guitar player on tour, I really don't ask for too much. Like, as a rhythm guitar player for Slash, I don't like to step on him or you know, put too much colour and too much of anything in anybody's face, if that makes sense. With Mammoth, I have a bit more freedom because there's a lot more ambient stuff that happens, you know?

"So I think it varies from band to band, with Slash my pedalboard's not very crazy and in general I'm not a guy with a massive pedalboard, but I feel like what I have are the absolute essentials for a live performance as a guitar player. I'm very specific about the brands I use, but I guess over the decade-plus that I toured with Slash and now with Mammoth, It's been very fun just fine-tuning [my rig] and starting to branch out a bit more as far as pedals go. I feel like a fairly barebones rock guitar player as far as my rig goes. If I could, I would just go directly into my amp and just call it a day."  

"As far as essentials, the one thing that I recommend any musician get eventually – the problem is they're a bit pricey – is in-ear monitors. I swear by the Jerry Harvey Audio Layla set. 

"I think, ultimately, it's come down to ear protection for me. I think that's the most important thing besides the obvious, which is just making sure that you have the best possible mix and that you can hear everything that’s happening. It just affords you the ability to really fine-tune and understand what's happening on stage. You can hear every little detail. 

"It's a really incredible experience when you first do it. It's something to get used to and you don't think about how convenient it is. Of course, if I could play a small club all the time with monitors, I would, but when you play in a band with someone like Slash who loves to play insanely loud – like crazy, crazy loud – it's nice to be able to kind of reel him in and actually hear what he's doing a bit better, and to be able to hear what I'm doing too, especially playing next to someone like him, his rig is insane. 

"But the other thing with the Slash band – I think it's so key as we don't use a click. With Mammoth, we use a click and I think Mammoth absolutely needs a click. Every band really needs a click [laughs], but a lot of old-school bands don't and I've kind of grown up that way. I never really used it, but I think that the in-ears really helps everybody just kind of stay in their own orbit in a live setting and it's an absolute requirement for what we do with Slash if we're not going to use a click.  

"I remember before I joined the Slash band in 2012, I didn’t use any in-ears, ever. I never did, and you know after a tour, your ears would be ringing for sure. I remember when I first got my ears, it was a set of Ultimate Ears. I put them in, I played in Brazil somewhere and I was like, oh my God, this is a completely different world. 

"My mix is always very simple, like when it comes to Mammoth WVH, I pretty much only have Wolf's guitar, his vocal, my guitar and vocal and the drummer. Everything else is very low. 

"With Slash, I have Myles, lots of drums usually and then a bit of Slash. You know, because I need to know where he's at and where he's standing. He loves to bounce all over the stage, you'll just be standing and all of a sudden, if you're not paying attention, Slash is right in front of you [laughs]. So it's kind of nice to know what's going on."

When it comes to guitars, I see you most often with a Gibson SG, would you say that was your number one? 

"The SG has become my favourite guitar and a staple for both bands. I'm playing an SG at all times – I have one right next to me now. I always liked them growing up, I always gravitated towards them, but it seemed like there were so many different variations I didn’t know which was the right SG for me, you know. It's like the Stratocaster, there’s a million different types. What's the one for you? You know. 

"[My main SG is] a 1964 reissue and the reason I like the ‘64 is because it's got the ‘59-sized neck, so it's a bigger neck. The pickups are unpotted, so it definitely gets a little feedback, but it's very old-school. You know, that's just what it was. When you turn up, it just sounds so good that way – but you’ve got to be in control of your feedback. 

"For Slash and Mammoth, I find that it fits perfectly in that world. Honestly, on stage, if Slash is playing a Les Paul, I shouldn't always be playing a Les Paul even though that's one of my main guitars. I used to play a Telecaster with him, too, because it really added to the show. It's like you can actually completely decipher between both guitars. 

"I think the SG fits in that perfect middle ground. It's got the beefiness and it's got the cut. It cuts right through when I'm playing along with Slash, so it's very fun. 

"It's always been that guitar I didn't realize I needed, but I have three of them now and I have them dispersed between both bands. It's like they're just my favourite and I play them all the time. The main one is the green one – it’s Olive Drab."

"We picked it up in Nashville, I saw it online and then Slash goes, 'Oh, I actually know the owner of that guitar store,' so I went down there and I played it and I was like, 'All right, please, please let this guitar not be as good as I hope it is because I don't have the money to do this right now'. I also don't have the brain capacity to be like, oh, I'm gonna miss this guitar if I don't get it now.' 

"And if I tell Gibson to build one for me, it's not going to be the same guitar. It's just never the same. Yes, they'll build an incredible guitar to spec, but the problem is that the neck of this guitar is not going to be the same. 

"I ended up getting that guitar because Slash surprised me with it – believe it or not. I've never really told this story publicly. I was going down to that guitar store to check out the SG, and Slash was like, 'Hey, let me know if you could find a case for my lap steel,' and I was like, 'Okay.' 

"So I go down there I find a lap steel case. I was like, 'What do you think?' And he's like, 'oh, this is great.' So I get it. Then I'm hanging out playing the guitar, and man, this guitar is perfect, so I send Slash some photos, like 'Dude, it's better than we thought!' He's like, 'Oh, that's great.' 

"So when I leave I just kind of accept the fact that I'm not getting a guitar. So we go to the Gibson Garage and we're just messing around playing different guitars. They have an Olive Drab Les Paul, it was a Classic, I think. Man, I just wanted an Olive Drab guitar, so you know, I'll take this as a consolation prize and I'll be happy with that.

"So I get that and go back to my hotel room and they're like, 'Yeah, we'll deliver it to the venue tomorrow', so I'm just sitting there in my hotel room wishing I had a guitar, and I get a knock on the door at 11:30 pm. I open my hotel door, and it's Slash and his girlfriend, and he's holding a guitar case, and I'm like, 'what the hell is that?' 

"Then I look and it's an SG shape. I go, 'Dude, what are you thinking? You’re crazy!' I open it up and I'm like, 'Oh my God!' He goes, 'I knew you had to have it and I wasn't gonna let you walk away without it'. 

"So yeah, he bought me that guitar, which is just the coolest thing of all time. 

"When it comes to guitars, he’s the same as us. He's a child that way. When he sees a guitar he wants, he's like 'I need it, I have to have it.' Of course, he’s not like that with all guitars. He's very specific, you know, it's like a guy who can get whatever guitar he wants. He's not going to do it unless it's something he really genuinely believes in and enjoys the way it plays. 

"So now I have that exact guitar in three different colours. As well as the Olive Drab, I have it in Inverness Green and Silver Mist – and that's the one I play with Mammoth. 

"As far as necessities on the road, the other guitar is definitely a Les Paul – you know, if I have the sonic spectrum of the SG covered. I said that you shouldn't play a Les Paul with Slash at all times, but there are plenty of times when it's necessary. So I'm definitely playing my Les Paul – I play a ‘59 reissue, Gibson R9. 

"And again that's another one of those guitars. It's different. It is its own thing. Every single ‘59 that they build, they're all different. They all have their own vibe, colour and top and just everything about it. I got mine in the Gibson showroom in LA. 

"And that guitar is so unique, it almost sounds like a Telecaster at times. Sometimes it's very interesting how the right set of PAF pickups can just sound, in that middle ground, like the Les Paul, but also a Telecaster. It's very cool." 

I have to ask what it’s like standing on stage with a Les Paul around your neck, next to the most famous Les Paul player of all time? That must be a pretty intimidating experience.

"It's funny, man, I'll say this, it's never lost on me. We've been friends for over a decade and bandmates – and it's great. It's always cool, you know, it's just normal. We travel in a bus, we eat food, we do normal people things together, but yeah, there's still plenty of time where you're just like, wow, it'll just kind of pop into my head. 

"The same with Wolfgang. I remember going to see Van Halen for the first time in like 2008 or 2009, I think. It was his second tour and they played Vegas. It was great to see him. I was like, 'oh man, we're almost the same age' and then fast forward to now and here we are – we're in a band together!  

"I spent so much time growing up playing along with my favourite Rush and Alice Cooper albums, all the live albums. I would just memorize them and play along. There was no promise of anything. It was just something I genuinely loved to do. I'd play along with my favourite albums and these people that I looked up to and I would visualize playing with them at times. I'd be at work at a retail job or whatever else I was doing and I would just picture it. 

"I played the Golden God Revolver Magazine awards with Slash and not only was I playing with Slash, but we had Alice Cooper come up and play with us so it was [one of] those moments of just like, 'Man I've been playing Schools Out my whole life and now the man himself is here, we're actually doing it' – all the live album practice finally paid off [laughs].

"I'll even raise you one more because this is a really cool thing that happened that I still can't believe. And I'm so eternally grateful for the people who reached out. 

"This was in 2016, and I got a call. They're like, 'hey Alice Cooper does this thing twice a year where he does a golf tournament for charity. All sorts of rock legends come out and play golf for charity, and they do a jam with all the people the night before the tournament, we want Frank to play, would he come down and jam?' 

"I was like, 'dude, of course, I'd love to play Alice Cooper songs and hang out with you guys.' About a week later, days before the actual event I get an email that says Alex Lifeson is going to be joining us. I was like 'oh my God', because again, that's not only jamming with Alice again, it's playing with one of my absolute guitar heroes growing up. I loved Rush and still love Rush!

"I met him once as a kid at one of the Rush shows because a close family friend, her mother went to school with him. So I got to just meet him as a kid. And then she emailed him to say, 'Hey, remember that kid you met years ago, you're going to play with him and Alice Cooper,' and when I saw him for the first time, on a professional level before sound check, he's like, Hey I remember you!' It’s still hard to believe that it actually happened."

From other interviews and photos online, I noticed you have a fairly modest pedalboard. Can you walk us through your pedalboard essentials? 

"I'm currently building a new pedalboard for the Conspirators. For years I always used to keep it real simple. 

"The MXR Phase 90, that's just the standard I have to have. I use it all the time and guess which band I use it in the most. Yup, it’s Wolfgang Van Halen's band Mammoth [laughs]. So it's cool because I got the striped one, like the Eddie Van Halen colours, the red, white and black. 

"Then I’ve got to have a wah pedal, of course. Slash always has a cool wah – he had his own signature – but the one that I swear by because it's got the perfect sweep is the EVH version, the yellow and black one, it’s unbelievable. 

"I hate turning on a wah and then I step forward it’s like it’s barely on and when you rock it back and forth and it sounds like the power of it's only in the middle. The EVH wah is perfect. It's got the perfect wah sweep, so that's become my absolute favourite. I use that all the time. 

"Are you familiar with Walrus Audio? I've been using them a lot for delays, specifically the ARP-87. This thing rules – I’m a big fan of that. If I don't have access to the Walrus Audio, I use the MXR Carbon Copy because again, that's just one of those simple pedals that works great." 

"Can you take a guess at which tuner I have on my pedal board?"

Hmm, the Boss TU3?

"Nailed it, you're right. It's the standard. You can't go wrong with it. 

"The next pedal is a volume pedal. The one thing that I learned during the Slash band is, I think it's important that everybody is not just channel switching from clean to dirty, you know? I think also in the Slash context, I'm always using a fairly classic amp that only has one channel. So in the Wolfgang scenario, we use the EVH amps that have multiple channels, but it's still a very classic-sounding amp. But the thing that I am trained to do is always use my volume to turn down and up like that's so Slash, and something we've always done. 

"It’s important because it just sounds so real and human on stage, instead of it being like, okay now we're loud, now we're quiet, now we're loud, now we're quiet again. 

"The volume pedal becomes necessary when there are lots of real quick changes in a song. In the [track] You're A Lie, I can't do the effect that takes place in that song with just the volume on my guitar – like you can, but I have to use the volume and the delay and slam it really quick, so it gives you this cool fadeout thing." 

Back in 2021, you were announced as an Orange artist. So I take it you are mainly using Orange amps now on tour?

"I used the Orange Custom Shop 50, that thing absolutely rules – that’s what I used on the last Slash album and last tour. I always wondered what the Orange amp is, you know? What's the Orange amp that kills them all? My buddy Scott Holiday from Rival Sons, goes, 'dude, there's only one orange. Get the CS50.'

"So I ended up buying one. It's funny, Alice Cooper's son Dash, he had an Orange cabinet and we traded my Wizard cabinet for his Orange one. So I used it for the last Slash tour and I just couldn't get enough man – the Les Paul through that CS50 just hits, it sounds so good. 

"The other amp I use is the EVH 5150III S, it's got the 6L6 tubes. In all honesty, I had zero experience with those amps because I just assumed they would be a bit too saturated and a bit too much for what I wanted to do. It turns out they are not, they are genuinely a classic amp. But of course, if you step on the third channel, then it sounds pretty explosive if you want it to.

"We all sound different in Mammoth. We each play a different EVH head. Because there are three guitar players, you need to be able to decipher all three of us. If you go to a show, you can hear each one. It's pretty cool. 

"It's a very, very classic-sounding amp. The other thing I love about it is that the amp I'm using is the one that Ed used. It's the one that Eddie Van Halen used specifically, the same model, I've been using that for years. I really love it."

As far as guitarists go, you are in a pretty unique position. Not only do you play in a band with Slash, but you’ve also supported Guns N' Roses while playing in Mammoth WVH. Did you learn anything new about your bandmate while watching him perform with his old band?

"It's funny. I think one thing I did notice is that I've always kind of known Slash to be like any artist, self-conscious. Who isn't? 

"You know, even Slash, he's a human being. That's another reason why I love the guy. It's funny because I remember there were times when I'd go out there and I'd watch him and he was like, 'oh, man, you're making me nervous.'

"He’s like, 'I actually prefer it when I don't know that my friends are watching me play, it makes it easier because I can just be myself, and if not, I'm overthinking it.' Not that you would ever know it as a spectator. He's always out there killing it.

"But you know, we all have our own critiques. I think that just kind of hammered home more of the human aspect of the guy."

I think one of the things that has made Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators such an enduring band for all these years is the chemistry between the members. It doesn’t feel like a Slash solo project, it feels like a band just like Guns N' Roses or Velvet Revolver. What do you feel has contributed to the longevity of the project?

"When that project first showed up, before I was ever in it, it was just called Slash. Then it was Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators. Slash will be the first person to tell you he didn't want it to be just called Slash. He's like 'I don't like the idea of it being just me. I want it to be a band.' He's always preferred being in a band, that's his whole thing. And you know, I think it's very admirable coming from somebody who has such a history, such longevity and accolades in the business.

"So I think what contributes to what makes this band a band is that he's trusted us to write the songs with him and I think we all get along so well. I think Brent, Todd, Myles and I, we're in a lot of ways cut from the same cloth. 

"We just get along. We love the same music and we have the same influences. That's another thing I love about Slash, this is a guy that even though I look up to him, there's an entire other generation that Slash and I both look up to together. It's very cool, we can both get excited about jamming Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones and stuff – it'd be one thing if I played in a band with Paul McCartney, it's like, 'yeah, you know, skiffle groups and stuff that I grew up listening to' [laughs]. 

"Plus he includes us in everything you know, the videos, the merch, it's not just the Slash show and I think that that translates very well and everyone can see it. You know, technically – now, I think that Guns N' Roses are back together, it might change this stat – but The Conspirators is the longest consecutively running thing that Slash has ever done."

Can you talk a little about the writing process for a Conspirators’ record? How much input does each of the members have when it comes to writing new material? 

"For most of the songs, he's usually the riff guy. It's like every song starts with his riff. Our writing process always starts at sound check or if we're rehearsing. For the last decade-plus, we would just go to sound check, and then Slash would roll up and play a riff, and then we'd play a riff, and then it goes into a verse, and it goes into a chorus. We do that all the time. 

"That's just always how it starts, and Brent [Fitz], my drummer, will play the drums, Todd [Kerns] will come in on the bass, and I'll just try to see where he’s at on the guitar and not play what he's playing. You know, there's times to mimic and play what he's playing, and there's times to actually be a rhythm guitar player. 

"It's an interesting role that I think, you have so much freedom, which is really fun. Like if Slash is playing the low part, you'll play the high part, or you'll play a harmony or you'll play whatever. It's cool, there's plenty of room for colour and lots of different approaches, and it's great because he's very open-minded to anything I've ever come up with. 

"There are times when they'll get together, just drums, bass and guitar, and they'll send me [what they've been working on], and then I'll write my parts. I'll show up to the next rehearsal, and we'll jam it together and I'll show them what I wrote. It's really fun. It's a fun process.  

"Myles comes up with a lot of ideas, too. As an incredibly accomplished guitar player himself, he will come up with great guitar parts that Slash and I are both like, 'well, that's that's the fucking move, all right, good idea, Myles!'

"The other thing I love about it is that Brent and Todd are both very accomplished songwriters and both multi-instrumentalists – Brent specifically, as he can legitimately sing, play guitar, bass, drums and piano. He does it all and it's so cool because he knows the actual songwriting side of it. He knows how to communicate with a guitar player. He's the first guy to reach out and be like, 'actually, that would be really cool if it did this.' And it's like, 'yep, good idea.' It's a nice collaborative effort, all five of us."

I know you are hitting the road with Slash this year, but are there any plans for a new record?

"Not right now, but I can almost guarantee you that when we walk into that rehearsal room as a team, Slash is going to have a new riff and we're going to write something. It happens every time."

As the last album, 4, was tracked completely live, do you think you'll want to take the same approach for the next record?

"I actually don’t know. Slash was like a kid, he was so excited to do that. He always loves playing the way we did it, which is very live. He wants to [record] with loud-as-hell amps while you're in the same room. 

"That could just be a one-off thing. There are so many factors and variables with recording, especially guitars, because it's like each of these strings goes out of tune every two seconds, the intonation of the guitars and having two guitars and all that. It was just crazy – we did it to tape too!  

"So I think that the next album, if we do an album in the near future, whenever that is, it would probably be how we did it before with Elvis, the last producer.

"Dave Cobb [producer], was a lot of fun to work with, but I'm not really sure, I have no genuine foresight right now because I'm in Mammoth and Myles has a solo project and Alter Bridge, and Guns N' Roses is a priority – who could ever blame Slash, he's got to do that! 

"But it's cool because it's opened the door for us to do other things. When we can get together, we do. It's been nice going over the songs again, it's been really fun. The memories are coming back and I just can't wait to jam these songs again."

So with Mammoth, Wolfgang plays all the instruments on both of his releases. Are there plans for the current live band to record together? 

"It's a tough call because so much of what Mammoth is, it’s literally Wolfgang and Elvis [Baskette] the producer. 

"We're very close. We're very much the same person as far as humour goes, and I just love the guy. It's like we get along really well. And even when we're making joke songs, some of it's really cool. And we're like, 'oh, that's hilarious. That's in my head now,' it happens all the time. 

"And so I think that there’s a chance that we could maybe do a song together. Maybe, I don't know. I feel like that's up in the air. Or we do some sort of instrumental, who knows? There are plenty of joke recordings and real recordings of us just jamming.  

• You can catch Frank with Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators on The River Is Rising – Rest Of The World Tour which kicks off in Mexico City on the 23rd of January. Head over to Slash Online for more information, and to grab tickets to a show near you. 

Join us for our traditional look back at the news and features that floated your boat this year. 

Best of 2023: When you're very good at what you do, you can get headhunted. And that's especially true in rock n' roll where the departure of key band members (or dissatisfaction with them) can lead to hard questions and unexpected propositions.

 Just how close did we come to hearing Rory Gallagher's maverick blues in the Stones, Michael Schenker's cocked wah in Aerosmith or Michael Bolton's soaring soul vocals fronting Black Sabbath?

Let's find out… 

Shuggie Otis – The Rolling Stones 

The first of a few Stones propositions, the psychedelic soul singer-songwriter got a call from the band's touring pianist Billy Preston (more on him later) in the mid-seventies to see if would be interested in joining the lineup for a tour. 

Otis had recently got to the end of a long creative tunnel to release his own album Inspiration Information, and the decision was easy for him. “I was so excited about my own music coming out that nothing really appealed to me about wanting to be in anybody’s group,” he told Rolling Stone in 2013.

“I didn’t want to be a sideman,” he explained to the Guardian in 2016 about his mindset at the time. “I wanted to do my own music. ”I could have been an instant millionaire, a few times, probably, but that wasn’t on my mind at all.”

Myles Kennedy – Led Zeppelin

This one got far enough down the line for Myles Kennedy, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham to have jammed together more than once, following a call to the Alter Bridge vocalist from the drummer. Fresh from the high of Zeppelin's 02 Arena reunion in 2007, but knowing Robert Plant did not want to take it further, the trio set about moving forward the following year with another singer.

Kennedy's vocal ability was obvious, and combined with his deep knowledge of Zeppelin's back catalogue it put him firmly in the frame. But he wasn't the only one; Steven Tyler also jammed with them. Kennedy made enough of an impression after his first session with the band to be invited back for four days a few months later.

"I should say that it was never supposed to be 'Led Zeppelin' per se, because how could it be Led Zeppelin?" Kennedy told us in 2010. "I think they were just itching to play again. Still, they weren't really sure of what they wanted to do exactly. What happened was, I got together with them one day in June of 2008 and we just jammed on some ideas. Everything went really well, and as you can imagine, I was just flattered beyond all belief to be in the same room with those guys. I mean, everything I ever learned about rock, I learned from Led Zeppelin. Just being near Jimmy Page was unbelievable. All the guys! Hearing their stories, the whole experience…it was something I'll always treasure."

So why didn't it go any further?

"Well, I'm not really sure," Kennedy admitted to us. "Again, I just don't think they really could decide on what they wanted to do. I did get together with them again a few months later, and this time we spent about a week jamming on some ideas. I didn't do any actual writing with them – it was all very informal. There was just so much going on around them, and once all the talk got out about 'Led Zeppelin is going to tour'…I'm not really sure why things didn't happen, but that's OK."

Michael Bolton – Black Sabbath, Ted Nugent, Journey

Now this is a strange one – and not for the obviously surreal proposition of the Soul Provider singing War Pigs in 1982. No, it's because one party denies it was ever even a remote possibility. Spoiler: it's not Tony Iommi. 

"Me and [bassist Geezer Butler] had to rethink the whole thing," Iommi wrote in his 2012 autobiography Iron Man. "We had a million tapes sent in from different singers and most of them were horrible. One of them was from Michael Bolton. I didn't know him at the time. We had Michael come in and we had him sing Heaven and Hell, War Pigs and Neon Knights. He was quite good, but he wasn't exactly what we were looking for then. We dropped a bollock there, didn't we? Michael Bolton! A little bit of a mistake."

That all sounds too specific to be a misunderstanding, and Iommi returned to the subject again in 2020.

"I found David Coverdale, and he said, 'Oh, I just got this band together, Whitesnake. Why didn't you find me before?'" Iommi told Gibson TV . "I said, '[Black Sabbath vocalist Ronnie James Dio] hadn't left before; it's happening now.'

"So, there was a lot of looking for another singer, and we would audition various singers — including Michael Bolton, believe it or not," Iommi added. "He was one of them, which was an odd one. It just went on a bit, and we couldn't decide."  

And what say Bolton in all of this? He says it never happened. "That's a rumour," he told Malaysia's Lite in the clip above. "I think people mix it up because my rock group was Blackjack...we did two albums for Polygram in the late '70s, those were part of my rock years."

Bolton does add that he discussed joining Ted Nugent's band as a vocalist though, instead deciding to focus on his solo career. But that's not all; he was also briefly in the running to replace Steve Perry in Journey following the singer's 1987 departure.

"We thought about it for a second," Journey guitarist Neal Schon told Louder in a reader Q&A in 2012. Michael definitely had pipes – he was pretty bionic when I worked with him. But even then there was a lot of personality clashing. I didn’t feel that we would get too far, that’s all I can tell you."

In the same interview Schon alluded to some of that 'clashing' in a separate experience he had with Bolton.

"Michael Bolton was a little eccentric," he opined. "I played the blues guitar solo on his version of (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay, and Bolton made me re-do my solo about 200 times." Ouch. 

Marc Ford – Guns N' Roses 

Former Black Crowe Marc Ford recently detailed the time he was approached, and declined, the chance to play alongside Slash as Izzy Stradlin's replacement in the early '90s.

“The music of the Crowes spoke to me a bit more,” Ford reflected recently with Guitar World about choosing the Robinson brothers over Axl and Co. “But also – and even Slash agreed with me on this – the Crowes were a better fit for me over Guns N’ Roses because, with the Crowes, I could have more of a voice.”

“If I had joined Guns N’ Roses that would have basically been me filling the role of someone having to back up Slash,” he added. “I don’t think it would have been all that fulfilling or satisfying to do that. I would have gotten bored, and that would have been dangerous…”

Zakk Wylde - Guns N' Roses 

Zakk got much closer to becoming a hired Gun than Ford; he jammed with the band for a week in the mid '90s when Slash and Duff McKagan were still part of the lineup, and that period even sewed the creative seeds of a song.

“[Zakk] brought energy and enthusiasm that was lacking within Guns at the time, wrote McKagan in his 2011 autobiography. "‘We can build on the legacy,’ he said excitedly. ‘We can make something great. Listen to this.’ He saw a piano against the wall and sat down and elegantly played it. I had no idea he could play piano at all, much less like this.

"We recorded a few demos with him, but nothing panned out," Duff added. One of those demos would become Rose-Petalled Garden, a song on the first Black Label Society album, 1998's Sonic Brew.

Paul Rodgers – The Doors, Deep Purple 

When you're one of the greatest blues-rock vocalists of all time, people will call, and sometimes those people are the members of The Doors and Deep Purple.

Paul Rodgers' illustrious career has seen him collaborate with guitar greats including Paul Kossoff, Jimmy Page and Brian May, but if it wasn't for his commitments to his own projects at the time we could have seen him in at least one other classic band. 

Following the death of Jim Morrison in 1971 the surviving members of The Doors were serious enough about approaching Rodgers to take on the lead singer role that they flew to London to find him.  "[The] thing is, at that time, I had buried myself in the country, working on things, and they couldn't get a hold of me," Rodgers told The Pulse Of Radio in 2011.  "My jaw actually dropped like in a cartoon when Robby [Krieger, guitarist] told me this," the singer added. "Would I have joined them? I dunno. It's hard to say, looking back. But I think not. I tend to form bands, that's what I do. Although it's always flattering to be asked!"

A similar situation arose in 1973 when Rodgers got the call to replace the departing Ian Gillan in Deep Purple. "Free had played with Deep Purple in Australia and it was our very last show," Rodgers told Hoston Press in 2007, confirming the DP rumour. "I got along really well with [Purple] keyboardist Jon Lord and we exchanged numbers. Later, I got a call to [join], but I was forming Bad Company at the time, so it wasn’t possible." 

Michael Schenker – Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, Ozzy Osbourne, Motörhead

The Flying V firebrand was certainly in demand in the seventies and early eighties. Starting with Ozzy Osbourne's search for Randy Rhoad's replacement…

"I was kind of tempted," Schenker told Full In Bloom in 2022. "I had only just left UFO and the Scorpions, and I had already auditioned for Aerosmith. When I was approached by Ozzy, he told me, “You were Randy Rhoads’s favorite guitarist. I want you to join.” It was kind of strange to deal with that situation because Ozzy called me in the middle of the night, and he was obviously very confused and disturbed and begged me to join. I considered it heavily, but something was pulling me away. I had to analyze what was going on. I didn’t quite understand myself."

The guitarist's instincts told him to focus on his own music, rather than playing the parts of another player. Nevertheless, following advice from his management Schenker actively auditioned for Aerosmith to replace Joe Perry following his own walkout from The Scorpions on their 1979 tour for the Lovedrive album. But Aerosmith claimed Schenker made a terrible first impression before he even played a note.

In the official Aerosmith book Walk This Way, Schenker is described as walking into a rehearsal room and greeting vocalist Stephen Tyler, guitarist Brad Whitford, bassist Tom Hamilton and drummer Joey Kramer with the following announcement: “Hello, I’m taking over. Before I join your band, I want it clear I’m taking over right now. Here – my jacket – take and hang up.”

Schenker denies this. “What happened was that [manager] Peter [Mensch] flew me to New York," the guitarist told Classic Rock. "Steven wasn’t doing so good at the time, and I wasn’t in the best shape either. I ended up sat in my hotel room for five days waiting for something to happen. And when it did… it was worthless. Nobody was in a fit state to make it work.

“But later, when I started the Michael Schenker Group [in 1980], Joey Kramer and Tom Hamilton wanted to be my rhythm section,” he added. “We did some rehearsals but then just as we were getting somewhere Steven got better, so they went back to Aerosmith.” All's well that ends well, but then there was the Stones…

Schenker allegedly ignored the call to audition for the legendary band in 1973 when he arrived in the UK as a teenager to join UFO.  As he explains in the clip above, he received a phone call at the lodgings he was staying at, asking if he'd like to audition for the Stones. A flustered Schenker told them he'd call back. He never did. Then there was Motörhead…

When he first put Motörhead together, Lemmy asked me to be the guitarist," Schenker told Metal Talk in 2016. "It was many years ago, but we toured together when he was in Hawkwind and I was with UFO. We toured the States together, and I saw Lemmy every day, but later when he started to put Motörhead together, he approached me to be his lead guitarist but I wasn't interested… I couldn't see that it would be something for me. I declined. I just couldn't see how it would work."

Billy Preston – The Beatles 

Preston would have been an asset to any band he played in – which is why both the Stones and Beatles called on the keyboardist and vocalist's session services. He'd befriended the Fab Four as far back as 1962 and, along with Tony Sheridan, is the only non-Beatle to be given a credit on one of their recordings at the band's request. In Preston's case it was for the 1969 single Get Back, credited at The Beatles with Billy Preston. 

It was during this time that Preston's role in the band became ever more integral, as captured in the Get Back film. John Lennon suggested to the band that Preston could join, while McCartney argued it was hard enough to reach compromises between the four of them as it was.

It was during Harrison's time out from the band after temporarily quiting in the midst of the sessions that Clapton was considered as a replacement. But it wasn't needed in the end; during his time away, Harrison saw Preston performing with Ray Charles in London and asked him if he'd like to return to work with the Beatles alongside him. Relations between the band members very quickly improved as a result of Preston's presence.

“It’s interesting to see how nicely people behave when you bring a guest in, because they don’t want everybody to know they’re so bitchy,” Harrison wrote in the Beatles book Anthology. “Suddenly everybody’s on their best behaviour.”

“He got on the electric piano, and straight away there was 100 per cent improvement in the vibe in the room,” he added. “Having this fifth person was just enough to cut the ice that we’d created among ourselves."

Corey Taylor - Anthrax, Velvet Revolver 

Even though he was in one of the biggest metal bands in the world with Slipknot, and in a second band with Stone Sour, Taylor clearly couldn't resist trying some alternative shoes on for size when two bands were looking to recruit new vocalists. And he went surprisingly far down the line with one of them.

Taylor recorded around 10 songs with Velvet Revolver in 2010 as he was reportedly lined up as Scott Weiland's replacement, even going as far as to "neither confirming or denying" he was the new vocalist. Duff McKagan certainly sounded keen in the clip above from 12 years ago, but it seems Slash was less so.

"I love Corey to death but something about it was just a little too… what’s the word for it, you know how Corey sings, it’s very macho kind of thing." Slash revealed to Rolling Stone Australia in the clip below. "But it didn’t have certain elements I thought it needed so we just didn’t go down that path. That was the closest [to finding Scott's replacement] so far.” 

Those nine or ten songs remain unheard outside of the inner circle.  "The world will probably never hear them, which is fine, because I would want another crack at kind of working on some of that stuff anyway, Taylor told Loudwire. "But that will never happen, so it's all good."

A few years before that Taylor nearly became the frontman for New York thrash icons Anthrax, but that time it wasn't a band member that put the kibosh on it.

 “That actually started as an idea because of an acoustic gig that I did with Scott [Ian] and Frankie Bello at a place in New York," Taylor told Eddie Trunk in the 2020 clip shown below. "Afterward, we were all kind of just hanging out, and the half-joking line got thrown out, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if you joined Anthrax?’” Corey recalled on SiriusXM's Trunk Nation Virtual Invasion. “And we all laughed, and then we all stopped. And we all just went, ‘Hmmm. That could [be] interesting.’

Anthrax were without a singer at the time. “It was between Joey [Belladonna] and John [Bush], so everything was kind of up in the air," added Taylor. "We talked about it more and more, and it was something that I was really, really into.”

Slipknot's label Roadrunner had other ideas; the Iowa band's next album – that became 2008's All Hope is Gone – took priority. “It was the first time I had ever felt like I was kind of backed into a corner," said Taylor. "Not that I didn’t wanna do a Slipknot album, but I was so into the idea of doing an Anthrax album. And I remember having to call and tell the [Anthrax] guys that I wasn’t gonna be able to make it. It broke my heart so hard. But, obviously, things worked out for the better for them.”

It took a little while. The band ended up recording their next album [that became Worship Music] with vocalist Dan Nelson before he parted ways with the band in 2009 before it could be released. John Bush would return to help them for a live commitment before vocalist Belladonna officially came back to re-record Nelson's parts on a reworked Worship Music that finally saw a 2011 release. Metal sure is complicated sometimes. 

Dave Grohl – Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers

Dave Grohl was in an understandably dark place following Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994. He hadn't played drums publicly since his last show with Nirvana in Germany on 1 March that year, then Tom Petty came calling.

“Someone from my management calls and says ‘Hey, Tom Petty just called and wants to know if you’ll play drums with them on Saturday Night Live?’” recalled Grohl in the Petty documentary Runnin' Down A Dream. The Heartbreakers were between drummers follower the departure of Stan Lynch and Grohl was shocked to be asked.

"What the f*** is he calling me for? He couldn’t find a good drummer?” wondered Grohl. His hard-hitting performance on the show for the two songs the band played reminded everyone exactly why he was asked; muscular on Honey Bee's intro (a favourite Petty song of Grohl's) before sensitively syncopating with the guitar dynamics in the verses. "It’s like the kind of thing a bunch of 16-year-olds would play in the garage to get off," said Grohl. "It’s killer. It’s a barn burner.”

If SNL was a stealth audition, Grohl aced it. Later, Petty called to offer him the drum job. "I just felt weird about just going right back to the drums because it would have just reminded me of being in Nirvana,” Grohl admitted to Howard Stern in 2021. 

“It would have been sad for me personally. It would’ve been an emotional thing to be behind the drumset every night and not have Kurt there.”  Instead, Grohl took the unexpected path of becoming a frontman himself with the Foo Fighters. And that turned out pretty well didn't it. 

Adrian Smith, Phil Collen – Def Leppard, Iron Maiden 

A very unusual vice-versa prospect here. Phil Collen may well have got the job as Iron Maiden's replacement for Dennis Stratton… but there was a clear snag. "They asked me to come down and I wasn't really interested," Collen admitted to Inside Out in 2008. "I have known them guys for years. I used to go to school with the original singer Paul DiAnno, who I have known since I was six. All the guys grew up in the same area as me, they're lovely guys, I love 'em, but it's a different type of music. I was in a glam rock band [Girl] and now I'm in Def Leppard… which is more up my street."

Collen ended up joining Leppard to replace Pete Willis and tracked the solos on 1983's Pyromania, which did pretty well as we recall with 10 million sales in the US alone. Adrian Smith ended up getting the Maiden job and it all worked out very well indeed, until Smith quit the British metallers in 1990. When Leppard was looking for a new guitarist after the tragic death of Steve Clark in 1991, Smith applied to audition. And he was in illustrious company.

Collen confirmed in a press conference earlier this year that the band invited five people they knew to audition – including Smith, former Whitesnake man John Sykes and a young musician from Birmingham called Huey Lucas. "Vivian [Campbell] just fit in straight away; it was just like [it was] meant to be," said Collen. [But] Adrian is great — he's a great singer. That was one of the other things [we looked for], if you can sing."

“John could sing his ass off,” Leppard frontman Joe Elliot told Classic Rock. “And he wrote Still Of The Night for Whitesnake. Adrian I adore, and in the end it worked out well for him because he’s back in Maiden where he belongs. We also tried out a young unknown kid from Birmingham, Huey Lucas. Great player, but his voice wasn’t that strong. Vivian was always the number-one candidate. For us it wasn’t about how well you could play, it was more about how well you can sing. And more importantly, we’ve got to get on with this person.”

For his part, Smith has suggested he might talk about his perspective on it all in his next book, but as Joe Elliot noted, he ended up rejoining Maiden in 1999 anyway, alongside returning vocalist Bruce Dickinson. And everyone rocked happily ever after. 

Patty Smyth – Van Halen 

Van Halen with a female vocalist is a very interesting prospect – and it really could have happened. The former Scandal singer, who later enjoyed a hit duetting with The Eagles's Don Henley on Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough, found fans in Eddie Van Halen and his wife. The guitarist even guested with Scandal onstage for two songs in 1984 – and you can hear it below. Then with David Lee Roth's departure the following year, Smyth suddenly found herself in the frame to replace him.  

"They were heavy drinkers. I don’t drink,"she reflected in an interview with Stereogum in 2020 on her decision to turn the band down. "I never saw myself living in LA. I was like, “I’m from New York, we don’t move to LA.”

"It’s all semantics because if [Eddie] had said to me, 'Let’s make a record', then I would have said yes to that. But joining the band — to me then, 'Oh god, they fight all the time, him and his brother [Alex Van Halen], and I don’t want to get into a volatile situation.' And I was probably heavily hormoned out because I was eight months pregnant, so there was a state of mind that I was in of how I need to take care of myself. But I regretted turning him down. For a long time I regretted it. When you start to have regrets, I was like, 'Oh man I would’ve made so much money.'

Smyth had the pipes for the job and Van Hagar detractors would obviously have been spared that whole era. But the band did very, very well with Sammy and, for her part, Smyth isn't bitter about how things turned out now. 

"I wish I had the right kind of luck," she told Stereogum. "I feel it’s just like I’m in this stream or this river and sometimes it’s just taking you where you need to go. Sometimes you’ve got to paddle and go in certain directions and other times you’re just letting it take you. And for me, like I said, my life has turned out unbelievable. That I’ve been married and with the same man for 25 years is insane."

Dimebag Darrell, Slash – Megadeth 

If you thought Anthrax's singer maneuvers were complicated, they've got nothing on the revolving door in Megadeth. Dave Mustaine has remained the band's only constant since 1983, but that revolving door nearly stopped the world hearing Pantera's classic albums.

“I actually called him up and asked him to play in Megadeth,” Mustaine told the Tampa Bay Times in 2019 of Dimebag Darrell Abbott in a recent interview. “Fate would have completely changed if I would have called him before I called [drummer] Nick Menza. I said, ‘Hey, Darrell, I’m looking for a guitar player.’ And he goes, ‘Can I bring my brother?’ And I went, ‘Who’s your brother?’ He goes, ‘Vinnie Paul! Don’t you know Vinnie Paul?"

“He wanted to bring his brother and have him play with us," Mustaine continued. "And I go, ‘Oh, man, I just hired Nick Menza.’ Can you imagine what Vinnie and Darrell would have been with me and Junior [bassist Dave Ellefson]? Would’ve been pretty cool.”

We can hear that in our minds but surely the rumor Mustaine asked Slash to join the band is nonsense? No, actually. Around the mid '80s before Guns started taking off, Slash found himself living near Mustaine in LA. 

"I crashed wherever I could, and did whatever came to mind, and there was a point in there when I hooked up with Dave Mustaine of Megadeth," Slash wrote in his 2007 autobiography.  "We became friends; he was strung out on smack and crack and he lived in the same neighborhood, so we hung out and wrote songs. He was a true, complete fucking maniac and a genius riff writer.

"We'd hang out, smoke crack, and come up with major heavy metal riffs, just f****** dark and heavy as hell. Sometimes Dave Ellefson would join us; we got along great, we wrote some great s***. It got to the point, in our drug-fueled creative zone, that we started seriously entertaining the idea of me joining Megadeth.

"Guns was in a holding pattern, after all, and I was high enough to consider all kinds of bad decisions," Slash added. "Dave Mustaine is still one of the most genius musicians I have ever jammed with, but still, in my heart of hearts, I knew I couldn't leave Guns."

Rory Gallagher – The Rolling Stones

Michael Schenker was certainly not the only number The Stones called when Mick Taylor quit the band in 1974. He left a huge guitar hole to fill, but Rory Gallagher certainly had the potential to fill it.

Rory had already found success with Taste and as a solo bluesman by that point, documented by the Irish Tour film that same year, but he couldn't resist the chance to find out more when he received a surprising phone call from the Stones' road manager and pianist at the family home in Ireland.

"It was about one o’clock the morning," Rory's brother and manager Dónal recalled to The Telegraph in 2020.  "Back then, if the call was overseas, you had to go through the operator. She told my mother she was connecting. I took the call. I was a bit defensive because, in those days, there were a lot of kidnappings [by the Provisional IRA]. The guy says, ‘My name is Ian Stewart… I’m looking for Rory Gallagher.

“Rory had gone to bed on one of his rare early nights," Dónal added. "When I woke him, he thought I was winding him up. But he agreed to go to Rotterdam to jam with them.” Jagger even collected Rory from the airport. 

"Rory did three or four nights," Dónal told Eon Music in 2020, "and I remember him telling me the first night Keith didn’t come down, so Mick said to Rory; “Can you start me up with a riff? I’ve got this song, but can you help me with a riff?”, and Rory said OK, and Jagger was just filling up with a coffee from a vending machine, and it burned him, and he said; 'Oh jeez, that’s hot stuff!' and Rory said; “Oh, is the title ‘Hot Stuff’?” and he said; “Oh yeah, that’s a great title!” So yeah, there was a lot of Rory riffs on that album that was used later on."

Despite the creative sparks, and the positive noises from Jagger, the whole thing fell apart.   

“On the final night, Keith had come down, and they had done sessions over the days, but Mick and Keith weren’t talking to each other," Dónal explained. "So Rory said, ‘Please let me know what’s going on because I’ve got to be on a plane to Tokyo tomorrow‘ [he was leaving for a Japanese tour he'd already arranged]. And Mick said, ‘Keith wants to have a good long chat with you. Please go up. He’s waiting in his suite upstairs.’ And Rory went up, and Keith was comatose in the bed”.

“Rory stayed up all night, went back every half hour, and tried talking, but [Keith] wasn’t," continued Dónal. "So Rory made up his own mind, for whatever reason, and just packed up his guitar and amp, and I met him at Heathrow with a fresh suitcase.”

Rory left a note with the band that day with details of how to contact him but the communication breakdown was never repaired. He would never play with the Stones again. Ronnie Wood would eventually get the job, and nearly 40 years on he's still there and we still can't picture the gifted Rory playing a sideman role in the Stones. "I think there was an issue that Rory should have been the man," reflected  Dónal, "but Ronnie Wood probably fits in better with the style and with the image."     

• 10 of the best songs for beginner guitar players to learn

Rising from the ashes of Creed in 2004, Orlando hard-rockers Alter Bridge – comprising singer/guitarist Myles Kennedy, lead guitarist Mark Tremonti, bassist Brian Marshall and drummer Scott Phillips – have earned critical acclaim for their signature twin guitar sound and contagious vocal lines.

Following up 2019’s Walk the Sky album and 2020’s Walk the Sky 2.0 EP, the quartet have returned with what promises to be their most hard-hitting batch of tracks to date.

Alter Bridge’s seventh album – Pawns & Kings – is scheduled for global release on 14th October via Napalm Records.

Consisting of 10 brand-new songs, the album sees Alter Bridge ally with long-time collaborator, producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette (Slash, Myles Kennedy, Tremonti).

The result of nigh on two decades’ perseverance, Pawns & Kings represents the “blood, sweat, tears, and triumph” of a band dedicated not just to each other but also to their loyal fans.

Tracklist is as follows:

1. This Is War                                                           
2. Dead Among The Living
3. Silver Tongue
4. Sin After Sin
5. Stay
6. Holiday
7. Fable Of The Silent Son
8. Season Of Promise
9. Last Man Standing
10. Pawns & Kings

The LP’s title track has, today, been unveiled with an accompanying lyric video.

Watch it here…

Pawns & Kings is available to pre-order now in an extensive range of formats, as follows:

• CD Digisleeve
• 1 LP Gatefold BLACK Vinyl
• 1 LP Gatefold INKSPOT BLACK/GOLD Vinyl w/Slipmat and Record Butler (Napalm mail order only, limited to 500 worldwide)
• 1 LP Gatefold MARBLED WHITE/CRYSTAL CLEAR Vinyl (Napalm mail order only, limited to 400 worldwide)
• 1 LP Gatefold MARBLED ORANGE/BLACK Vinyl (Band Shop only)
• 1 LP Gatefold MARBLED WHITE/BLACK Vinyl (Band Shop only)
• 1 LP Gatefold CRYSTAL CLEAR Vinyl (Band Shop only, limited to 300 only)
• Deluxe Box Set w/ CD Digisleeve, Pendant, Tote Bag, Guitar Pick tin (Napalm mail order only, limited to 700 worldwide)
• Music Cassette BROWN TRANSPARENT (Napalm mail order only, limited to 150 worldwide)
• Digital Album

Supported by Halestorm and Mammoth WVH, Alter Bridge will be heading out on a European tour later this year in support of Pawns & Kings.

Click here for information on dates and tickets.