A 1963 Fender Stratocaster and 70s Höfner 500/1 violin bass guitar recently went under the hammer with interesting connections to Noel Gallagher and Ocean Colour Scene respectively. We discover more…

He turned down Hendrix, butted heads with Lemmy, was saved from a bad trip by Pete Townshend, present at a thousand pop-culture flashpoints… Ten Years After bassist Leo Lyons explains why he’s like “the rock’n’roll Forrest Gump”.

Martin Barre MCNIDDER & GRACE

The modern-day funk maestro on Strats, creative gear solutions, and why not to be swayed by the “mystique of gear”

With Joe Bonamassa having gathered the cream of the scene for the B.B. King’s Blues Summit 100 tribute album – and written the intro to this feature – we take an alphabetised look back at the blues legend’s classic tracks, hotel bombings, car crashes, conspiracy theories, towering infernos and more…

What was your first guitar? I wanted a guitar when I was 10, but it took until I was 12 before my parents gave in. We went to a shop in King’s Cross in North London, and they had guitars hanging up, i