“He had these tiny little picks and his strings were like baby hair but, when he plays, it sounds like the strings are made of bull rope. It was thunderous”: Richard Hawley remembers playing with Duane Eddy
The inimitable Duane Eddy passed away at the end of April. The first true rock ‘n’ roll guitar hero, he set a template that many followed, but no one sounded quite like the king of twang.
One musician who knew him better than most was Richard Hawley. The patronage and friendship of the UK songwriter and big-body Gretsch obsessive was, in a large part, responsible for sparking Eddy’s creative and critical renaissance in the 2010s.
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Henry Yates is a freelance journalist who has written about music for titles including The Guardian, Telegraph, NME, Classic Rock, Guitarist, Total Guitar and Metal Hammer. He is the author of Walter Trout’s official biography, Rescued From Reality, a talking head on Times Radio and an interviewer who has spoken to Brian May, Jimmy Page, Ozzy Osbourne, Ronnie Wood, Dave Grohl and many more. As a guitarist with three decades’ experience, he mostly plays a Fender Telecaster and Gibson Les Paul.
