31 YEARS OF KEEPING TABS
AS MY COLLEAGUES and I proudly celebrate Guitar World’s 40th anniversary this year, memories have been swirling through my mind of the “good old days” following my hiring back in 1989, most of which are wonderful, some comical and Spinal Tap-esque and some downright scary, but now laughable. What follows is a loose timeline highlighting some noteworthy milestones and transformational moments that altered and ultimately improved the ways in which we produce and present GW’s lessons and song transcriptions, or “tabs.”
1989: WELCOME ABOARD, KID
AS PROFOUND LUCK would have it, this job opportunity landed in my lap right after graduating from college with a music degree. At the time, and for at least the next year or two, I didn’t know anything about magazine publishing, the seriousness of print deadlines (“Jimmy, the ‘book’ is going to press in 48 hours, potentially with blank song pages!”) and what the hell I was supposed to be doing. But I learned (and continue to learn) many invaluable and sometimes painful lessons and had the great fortune to be mentored by some exceptionally talented people, especially longtime editor-in-chief Brad Tolinski. Things were done a lot differently back then than they are today and much less efficiently too, with old-school magazine publishing “best practices” from the Eighties still followed until technological advances eventually made them obsolete through the transformational 1990s and beyond.
All hand-written song
