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The Latest Breaking News from John Lee Hooker

Classic Rock's Tracks Of The Week: August 18, 2025

Eight songs you need to hear right now, from Ricky Warwick, Deep Purple, Paradise Lost and more

Louder

“The only guitar I could ever play was the 125, but I wore them out – they were costing thousands to repair. They stopped making them around 1970; I was ready to stop playing”: George Thorogood on his “mutt” amp, and talking shop with Hound Dog Taylor

The 75-year-old – who’s not sure how he gets his sound – almost gave up playing when Gibson discontinued the ES-125. Now he says he’ll keep going until the guitar gives up on him

Guitar World

“I always played B.B. King. His style was commercial, not like the gutbucket style”: You may not know his name, but Jimmy Johnson was a contemporary of Buddy Guy – and the ultimate example of a Chicago blues virtuoso who ventured well outside the box

Brother of acclaimed guitarist Syl Johnson, the late Jimmy Johnson was a singular player who was a mainstay of his city's legendary blues scene, and wowed onstage into his 90s

Guitar World

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“He would beat the crap out of the guitar. The result can best be described as Jackson Pollock trying to play like John Lee Hooker”: Aggressively bizarre, Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica remains one of the craziest guitar-driven albums ever made

Dense as a rainforest and often hard to grasp, Captain Beefheart's best-known album is the poster boy of late-Sixties avant-garde rock

Guitar World

"He was the first time I'd ever seen the potential of music to be evil": From Oz punk to Detroit blues, Nick Cave names his Desert Island Discs

Nick Cave chose eight favourite songs on the long-running BBC Radio show

Louder

“A really painful song about how hard it is to lose friends. When I sing it, I think of John Belushi”: We asked Blues Brothers star Dan Aykroyd to give us his 11 favourite blues records, and he delivered

John Lee Hooker, Albert King, Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Wells - Blues Brothers and former SNL icon Dan Aykroyd knows his blues

Louder

“Like Gretsch’s Duo Jet, it was surely spurred by Gibson’s success with the Les Paul”: The mysterious history of the Guild M-75 Aristocrat, the blue-blooded hollowbody played by John Lee Hooker, John Mayer, St. Vincent and Dan Auerbach

This evocative downsized archtop appeared in mid-’50s New York and would go on to delight jazz players and rootsy bluesers alike

Guitar World

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"He was trying to numb the past, dull the present and look for comfort in the future. He found it there and it killed him": Dan Aykroyd on the tragedy of John Belushi and the making of The Blues Brothers

Cult movie The Blues Brothers exposed a generation to the brilliance of blues and soul legends like John Lee Hooker and Aretha Franklin

Louder

“Music has to be heartfelt. Robert Johnson didn’t go back and redo anything. John Lee Hooker, he walked in there and did it once”: Tab Benoit on returning from the swamp with the blues comeback of the year, and why he’s a one-take wonder

After more than a decade spent clocking up road miles, the Louisiana blues ace is back with a new 10-song collection, I Hear Thunder

Guitar World

“You can only imagine the effect this had on the young Keith Richards and Eric Clapton”: 9 must-hear albums that fueled the British blues guitar boom

The essential records that chart blues music’s epic journey – from its Delta roots through to the masterpiece that launched the heavy rock movement

Guitar World

Letters: Cleo Sylvestre obituary

Ron Gould writes: We all went backstage and Cleo was serenaded by John Lee Hooker

The Guardian - UK

"He was definitely a component part of what informed the vocals of Robert Plant and Ian Gillan": Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson on the bluesman who inspired the great rock singers

Chicago guitarist and singer-songwriter JB Lenoir avoidedblues cliches to tackle politics and social justice in his lyrics,influencing a whole generation of classic rock acts

Louder

Peter Green shaped his playing, John Lee Hooker enlisted his talents and Woodstock made him a guitar legend – nobody builds a blues solo like Carlos Santana

Ever since his Woodstock performance in '69, Santana has been one of the world's biggest guitar talents, with a melodic sensibility few can match. We go deep into his lead style

Guitar World

“It never dawned on me that I could make a living playing music. For many years, it was just a hobby, a way I could express myself”: John Mayall changed blues music forever – and introduced the world to some of its greatest guitar players

“The Godfather of British Blues” left us in July at age 90. We look back at his many achievements, triumphs and essential releases

Guitar World

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The Guardian - UK

John Mayall obituary

Bandleader, composer, instrumentalist and singer who nurtured players such as Eric Clapton and put British blues on the map

MusicRadar

"When he felt the spirit, he was untouchable" – the story of Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton and Peter Green

Two legendary players. Two near-mythical Les Pauls.Two all-time-great blues albums and the greatest guitar handover in blues history

MusicRadar

"Keep on playing the blues somewhere, we love you": John Mayall, British blues pioneer, dies aged 90

Bluesbreaker was one of the most influential rock musicians of the '60s

Guitar World

“Eric called and said, ‘Buddy Guy, George Harrison and I are playing tonight. You’re going to come and jam’”: Richie Sambora recalls receiving Eric Clapton’s spontaneous invite to a star-studded jam session

Sambora once asked Slowhand to feature on one of his singles, and it wasn't long before the pair were trading licks at the Roxy with a couple of other blues greats

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Guitar World

“The producer showed me a great recording trick – he covered my pick with a thin layer of paper. The sound was pure Bowie”: He played with John Squire and KT Tunstall. Now George Vjestica is exploring his experimental side as one of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds

You may not know him at first glance, but the work of Stoke-on-Trent native George Vjestica has probably appeared on some of your favorite albums and movies

Guitar World

“So well-versed in the art of blues that B.B. King said ‘he was like another one of my sons’”: 12 blues guitar albums that chart the genre – and the instrument’s – evolution

From Son House to Eric Gales, John Lee Hooker to Albert Collins, these classics highlight how blues guitar has changed over the years – its stories, tones and techniques all passed down and reinvented

MusicRadar

John Lee Hooker: "Eric Clapton, John Mayall and all those other people over in England made the blues a big thing. In the States, people didn't want to know"

Legendary bluesman on his latter-day fame

MusicRadar

"I remember him coughing and spitting up blood, probably from smoking too many cigarettes. But in my mind, Jim was indestructible": Robby Krieger looks back on the making of The Doors' LA Woman

Classic interview: Revisiting a 2012 chat on the album where The Doors produced themselves for the first time and Jim Morrison's health decline became clear – "It was a stressful time"

Louder

"Saucy enough to flavour a thousand barbecues": How a fabled Texan brothel inspired a ZZ Top classic

Celebrating a real-life Texan brothel, the visiting of which was in its day "a rite of passage", La Grange is still one of ZZ Top's best-loved songs and a must-play at shows

Louder

“If I ended up in jail, I knew I wouldn’t be able to play guitar”: the secret history of Jimi Hendrix’s pre-fame years

Although I don’t eat every day, everything’s going all right for me. It could be worse than this

Guitar World

“All these older blues players would come to Detroit to play local clubs. I was too young to get in, so I’d cut my hair short and glue a mustache on my face”: Tony Newton on playing with Gary Moore, Allan Holdsworth, and holding down the pocket at Motown

A blues, fusion, and studio veteran, Tony Newton is a low-end titan who has covered incredible stylistic ground over the decades, but to him, it's all about simplicity. He recalls the lessons James Jamerson taught him, his experiences playing with guitar legends John Lee Hooker and T-Bone Walker, and what…

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