Includes a code for free CD download of many of the bands featured in this book!

Nirvana, the White Stripes, Hole, the Hives – all sprang from an underground music scene where similarly raw bands,enjoying various degrees of success and hard luck, played for throngs of fans in venues ranging from dive bars to massive festivals, but were mostly ignored by a music industry focused on mega-bands and shiny pop stars. We Never Learn: The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988-2001 tracks the inspiration and beautiful destruction of this largely undocumented movement. What they took, they fought for, every night. They reveled in '50s rock 'n' roll and '60s garage rock while creating their own wave of gut-busting riffs and rhythm.

The majority of bands that populate this book – the Dwarves, the Gories, the Supersuckers, the Mummies, Rocket from the Crypt, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the Muffs, and the Donnas among them – gained little long-term reward from their nonstop touring and brain-slapping records. What they did have was free liquor, good drugs, guilt-free sex, and a crazy good time, all the while building a dedicated fan base that extends across America, Europe, and Japan. Truly, this is the last great wave of down-and-dirty rock 'n' roll.

Gruhn's Guide to Vintage Guitars is the most extensive and detailed list of specifications ever published for identifying, dating, and establishing the authenticity of an instrument. This new edition is enlarged and updated, making it once again the essential guide enabling collectors, dealers, players, and fans to determine the authenticity, rarity, and relative value of vintage acoustic and electric guitars, basses, mandolins, banjos, and amps. Gruhn's Guide's thoroughness, detail, and clear organization have made it without peer, the must-have tool for discerning an instrument's manufacturer, model, and date-and most importantly, whether it is in original condition.

“You will not find a better guide, nor one that is so easy to use.” – Vintage Guitar magazine

You walk into a local vintage guitar shop. You see what you think is the exact vintage Gibson Les Paul guitar you've been looking for the past seven years. Is it really true? Have you actually found it? How can you know for sure? You don't have your dependable Gruhn's Guide to Vintage Guitars updated and expanded edition with you because it's too big to carry around! And right when you most need it, too! You don't ever have to miss an opportunity like this again, because now, for the first time, Backbeat Books presents the unabridged Gruhn's Guide to Vintage Guitars Pocket Edition. Made in the classic model of traditional pocket field guides, this book contains all the valuable up-to-date information found in the standard edition, but is designed to be the ultimate user-friendly collector's companion, easy to carry anywhere.

• Small size book that fits in your gig bag or pocket but is easy to read

• Contains all the same information that the full size edition has, including all photos

• Lightweight paper that's durable and reproduces the book's photos well and a textured, soft leatherette cover make this the perfect compliment to your full size
“home”edition

Carlos Santana is one of Guitar Player's most frequently covered artists. Revered by guitarists for his tone and brilliant sense of melody, Santana has been extremely giving in his Guitar Player interviews, sharing his gear secrets, technical approaches, musical influences, and the building blocks of his sound. Here, collected in one volume, are all of Santana's interviews, from his first post-Woodstock discussion to detailing the popular juggernaut that was 1999's Supernatural to the masterful seminar he gave on creativity in 2008. Also included are style lessons and licks from Guitar Player's respected staff of music writers and transcribers that reveal all the voodoo that explodes from Santana's fingers.

Electric Guitars and Basses tells the story in full color of one of the most influential forces on American culture in the 20th century – the electric guitar. From the earliest “lap steels” that reshaped the sound of Hawaiian music, through the “Spanish-neck” models that created a new voice in the jazz world and powered the early rock and rollers, and on to the solidbody models that shattered conventional ideas of guitar design and guitar music, all of the classic and historically important models are displayed and discussed by guitar experts George Gruhn and Walter Carter. This new edition features an additional 16 pages of important instruments and newly discovered information.

Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution is a comprehensive guide to the relationship between American music and politics. Music expert Dick Weissman opens with the dawn of American history, then moves to the book's key focus: 20th-century music – songs by and about Native Americans, African-Americans, women, Spanish-speaking groups, and more. Unprecedented in its approach, the book offers a multidisciplinary discussion that is broad and diverse, and illuminates how social events impact music as well as how music impacts social events. Weissman delves deep, covering everything from current Native American music to “music of hate” – racist and neo-Nazi music – to the music of the Gulf wars, union songs, patriotic and antiwar songs, and beyond. A powerful tool for professors teaching classes about politics and music and a stimulating, accessible read for all kinds of appreciators, from casual music fans to social science lovers and devout music history buffs.

Keyboard Presents: Classic Rock brings out the stories behind the hits on drive-time radio, as told by the keyboard-playing artists and sidemen who created them. What was Billy Joel thinking when he wrote “Piano Man”? Who played the pounding piano on the Doobie Brothers' “China Grove”? What was it like to back up Jim Morrison in the Doors? How did synthesizers create the sound of Genesis? It's all here: the gear, the songs, the road stories, and the inspiration behind some of the greatest songs of the '60s, '70s, and '80s by Chicago, Deep Purple, Tom Petty & the Hearbreakers, Blood, Sweat & Tears Steve Winwood, the Grateful Dead, and many more.

There are many ways apart from the standard one to tune a guitar, and each way opens up new possibilities for the player and songwriter. In this latest installment in his bestselling songwriting series, author Rikky Rooksby talks the reader through these possibilities, introducing a number of common and not-so-common alternative tunings that can be used to great effect by any guitar-playing songwriter. Drawing on examples from a wide range of guitarist/songwriters who have used alternative tunings, from Keith Richards to Nick Drake, Rooksby opens up a rich new seam of inspiration for all those wanting to develop their guitar skills and take their songwriting to a higher level.

The latest addition to Tony Bacon's acclaimed series of guitar books, 60 Years of Fender gives a year-by-year history of the most successful electric guitar maker. In 1950, Leo Fender introduced to the world the solidbody electric guitar – the instrument known as the Telecaster. He soon added two more classics: the Precision Bass (1951) and the Stratocaster (1954). Fender's sleek, adaptable guitars have since fueled modern music – from country to rock – and have been heard in the hands of virtually every guitarist of note, from Buddy Holly to Kurt Cobain, from Eric Clapton to John Mayer. Illustrated with an unrivaled gallery of color photographs of instruments, players, and memorabilia, this revised and updated edition expands upon 50 Years of Fender (published in 2000), covering nine more years of the Fender story.

“A must-have for any Fender fan. Highly entertaining.”

– Guitar Player

Author Mary Lou Sullivan sat with Johnny Winter for hours of exclusive, no-holds-barred interviews, covering the guitar slinger's entire career. From toughing it out in Texas to his appearance at Woodstock, his affair with Janis Joplin, his stadium-filling tours, and washing out on drugs and the temptations of the road before finally fulfilling his dream of becoming a 100-percent pure bluesman, resurrecting the career of Muddy Waters, and winning a Grammy Award for his effort, this is a raucous roller coaster of story.

Rolling Stonemagazine has called Johnny Winter one of the greatest guitar players of all time. Ripped off and beaten down by unscrupulous managers, strung out, living the extreme highs and extreme lows of an uncompromising musician, Johnny is a true rock 'n' roll survivor. Signing with Columbia in 1969 for the largest advance ever paid a musician (which led to his appearance at Woodstock, recently reissued in the deluxe Woodstock Experience box set) he has jammed with guitar heavies Hendrix, Clapton, and the Allman Brothers. He is a legend and an icon, paving the way for fellow Texas superstars Stevie Ray Vaughan and ZZ Top. Along the way he has gone from boom to bust and back again, but has never lost his lust for his own brand of blues. Still on the road, playing hundreds of gigs a year to his devoted, adoring fans, Johnny, like this book, is the real deal.

More than any other publication, Guitar World magazine has followed Metallica's rise from underground phenomenon to mainstream metal giant. Guitar World Presents Metallica features every one of the facts and figures, interviews and stories about the band ever to have appeared in the magazine in one self-contained package. Presented in the chronological order in which they appeared in the magazine, the revealing interviews with band members James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Robert Trujillo, and Lars Ulrich – as well as former bassists Cliff Burton and Jason Newsted – tell the story of the boys from San Francisco who went on to become the metal men of the world.

This newly updated and expanded edition features an in-depth 20th anniversary look back at the group's 1986 epic, Master of Puppets; a revealing article about late bassist Cliff Burton's last 24 hours, including one of his final interviews; as well as a monumental guitar lesson with lead guitarist Kirk Hammett, who examines the techniques and theoretical approach that have made him a hard rock legend. It's all right here in Guitar World Presents Metallica – the myths, the memories, the triumphs, and the tragedies of America's foremost heavy metal team.

Stevie Ray Vaughan, bluesman, guitarist, and legend, was only 35 at the time of his death, but in his brief lifetime he managed to revitalize the blues, influence a generation of guitarists, and produce a phenomenal body of work. His story is told here in Guitar World Presents Stevie Ray Vaughan, a newly updated and expanded collection of articles about the great guitarist from the pages of Guitar World magazine. This deluxe volume features probing interviews held over the years with Stevie Ray, instructional material, a complete discography of his recorded works, and loving reminiscences by his fellow musicians.Guitar World Presents Stevie Ray Vaughan is an essential tribute to the great fallen guitar hero of our generation.

No musical entity has been more closely associated with Guitar World magazine over the years than Edward Van Halen – the man who, in the late seventies and early eighties, changed the course of guitar history. This collection of classic and new interviews with the great Edward tells the real story behind his earth-shaking technique, brilliant songwriting, and relationship with both David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar. This is the authoritative book – revised and updated with new exclusive interviews and information on one of the greatest rock bands of all time and the guitar god at the center of it all.

The definitive history of the world's most famous 12-string electric guitar.

When the Byrds recorded their hit version of Dylan's “Mr. Tambourine Man”, they popularized a new sound in pop music: the electric 12-string guitar.

Rickenbacker is the guitar maker that brought the electric 12-string to market and has since been almost single-handedly responsible for establishing what such a guitar should do. The California company gave one of its earliest 12-strings to George Harrison of the Beatles on the group's first tour of the United States in 1964. He immediately used it live and in the studio and showed off the sound of electric jangle to the rest of the world.

This book tells the story of those heady days in the '60s, of the competitors who tried and failed to match the sound, and of the instrument's continuing production by Rickenbacker and use by many modern guitarists. Complete with high-quality photos and exclusive interviews with many of the 12-string's leading players, this is the best guide yet to the history of the sound of jingle-jangle.