This issue, Guitarist magazine turns 40. It’s a milestone in a person’s life, let alone a monthly magazine devoted to oddly engaging chunks of wood and metal and the people who play them. But, such is the nature of guitar that a lot can change even while the things we love about it remain constant. The first copy of the magazine I ever bought was the July 1992 issue, with Slash on the front cover. The mag had been in print for just eight years at that point, so I hope you’ll forgive a little walk down memory lane with me now.
In my home town of Lowestoft there was one decent music shop, Morlings, which sold household appliances on the ground floor and guitars (plus sheet music, keyboards and things) upstairs. Back then the internet was in its infancy and certainly wasn’t a part of most people’s daily lives. So if you wanted a guitar you went to a shop that sold them. A visit to Morlings left a powerful impression on the wide-eyed beginner that I was then – even the smell of a guitar shop seemed magical: a unique fragrance of waxes and wood-scents and warm electronic circuits that I can still recall to mind today. If you looked around the store, back then, you’d see a family of Red Knob Fender combos, from a hulking Twin down to a little Champ, proudly on show beside a display stand showing off the jagged lines of the then-new Heartfield Talon range of electric guitars – Fender’s answer
