LAST MONTH, I discussed some of the advantages of playing in a power trio, such as the open harmonic canvas that it affords me as a guitar player. “Threw Me to the Wolves” is a song of mine that prese

Richard Barrett is on a mission to make you a better blues player – with full audio examples and backing tracks

ONE OF THE coolest and most badass-sounding things a guitarist can do is double a long, complex bass line an octave higher. This was my approach for the song “Dean Town,” which I recorded with Vulfpec

VAN HALEN WAS the world’s biggest rock band at the beginning of 1985. Their 1984 album had sold more than five million copies in the U.S., reaching Number 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart (their hi

From Black Sabbath awakening to jam band to Hanoi Rocks to decades-straddling solo artist, via Finland, London, NYC and beyond, he’s been up, down and up again, through thrills, spills, triumph and tragedy. You could say he’s really lived the rock’n’roll life, but that would be an understatement.

ON THE SURFACE, guitar trends in 1986 looked downright wild and perverse — a weird parade of shred-happy virtuosos, anthemic power pop heroes, dirtbag metalheads and eccentric alt-rock outsiders. But