“Her soloing is wild, well thought out, and performed with ease and abandon. It reminded me of playing with Jason Becker”: Marty Friedman’s 12 favorite guitar collaborations from his Japanese variety show channel
“John and Paul weren’t interested. The next day I was in a car with Eric Clapton and said, ‘Why don’t you come and play on this track?’” George Harrison on the Beatles classic saved by Slowhand
“I’ve used this guitar on 2,000 albums”: Fender recreates session legend Lee Sklar’s iconic P-Bass – used on records by James Taylor, Phil Collins and Jackson Browne
“It nearly didn’t happen. After I wrote the song, me and Diplo had a massive fight and I threw the hard drive at his head from the top floor”: How M.I.A. and producer Diplo broke the rules – and channelled Pink Floyd – on her mega hit Paper Planes
“We’ve never been a Strat band or a Marshall band. It feels a little too on-the-nose for what a rock sound should be”: Troy Van Leeuwen on turning his Custom Shop 12-string into a Squier signature, and channeling Robert Fripp for the new QOTSA record
“I reached out to Biggie. He came through. He sat in the studio and vibed, no paper, just listening to the music and rapping off the top of his head”: Jay-Z recalls his early days with The Notorious B.I.G. and the fatal beef between Biggie and Tupac
“His typical apolitical stance was being challenged in a way it never had been before”: Macklemore blames stadium owner, not Sheeran, for kicking him off tour
“He bought it on a trip with Noel Gallagher, a day or two after they first met. Johnny said, ‘Let’s go for a sandwich. Never buy guitars on an empty stomach”: Johnny Marr’s most iconic guitars, the stories behind them – and why he’s selling them now
“Engineers no longer need to lock themselves into proprietary plugin ecosystems”: Audient launches Horizon, a new line of Thunderbolt interfaces with sub-millisecond latency and no onboard DSP
“It was an absolute balls-up fiasco. It almost ruined me”: Hans Zimmer, Dr Who and the worst charity record of all time
“He didn’t tap a foot or move his head or anything. He listened to it all the way through and I thought he hated it”: When an Eagle, Heartbreaker, Roger Linn and an Oberheim OB-X combined forces for a pop masterpiece – the Boys Of Summer story
“He was very keen and a bit too excited… I didn’t like the idea of: ‘Now here’s another album'”: Tony Iommi on why he turned down the opportunity of one final Sabbath album with original line-up
“He spent all day programming a backing track then ripped the power cable out with his bloody foot and lost all the drum programming”: The New Order classic “stolen” from a Donna Summer B-side
Dave Grohl on how Nirvana were blindsided by the success of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”: “We played that song for the first time and the audience went nuts”
“Addiction is a disease and it’s terrifying… my family and my future had to come first”: Elbow drummer Richard Jupp on why he walked away for a life of sobriety
Angine de Poitrine broke a string onstage – and restringing the double-neck was so challenging it nearly derailed the show
“I remember looking at it on the floor going, ‘That can not be The Smiths’ guitar’”: The Johnny Marr guitar hidden in an iconic Oasis photoshoot
