Guitar Gods Unleashed

The Pittsburgh Steelers asked an Englishman to sing the American national anthem.

Bruce Dickinson did it a cappella, no autocue, having never sung it before in his life.

He held "free" for six seconds.

Interstate Love Song sounds like a straightforward rock song, but Robert DeLeo wrote it as a bossa nova on a $25 nylon-string guitar, then added a country riff.

That’s what set Stone Temple Pilots apart. Here they are headlining the Rolling Rock Town Fair in August 2001, six weeks after Shangri-La Dee Da.

Jimi Hendrix recorded “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” on May 3, 1968, the day after his long “Voodoo Chile” jam with Steve Winwood.

Here are Joe Bonamassa, Marcus King and Eric Gales trading solos on it at Clapton’s Crossroads Festival in Austin this September.

The two go back to the early ’90s, when a teenage Joe and his band Bloodline opened for Eric, who’d already put out his debut album at 16.

Wake Up to Guitar Greatness

Adrian Smith & Dave Murray, “2 Minutes to Midnight” (Live, 1985)

The title is not a figure of speech. In 1953 the Doomsday Clock hit two minutes to midnight, the closest to nuclear catastrophe it had ever been.

Adrian Smith built the song around that image with Bruce Dickinson for Powerslave, 1984. Here he and Dave Murray trade the leads live, 1985.

Guitar World called "Still of the Night" "the best song Led Zeppelin never wrote."

John Sykes co-wrote it and played every guitar part, then got fired before the album came out.

Here it is at the 1987 MTV VMAs without him. Vivian Campbell and Adrian Vandenberg on guitar, with Vandenberg using a violin bow à la Jimmy Page.