Guitar World
Guitar World is a monthly music magazine for guitarists – and fans of guitar-based music and trends – that has been published since July 1980. Guitar World, the best-selling guitar magazine in the United States,[2] contains original artist interviews and profiles, plus lessons/columns (with tablature and associated audio files or videos), gear reviews, news and exclusive tablature (for guitar and bass) of three songs per issue. The magazine is published 13 times per year (12 monthly issues and a holiday issue) by Future plc. Damian Fanelli has been Guitar World's Editor-in-Chief since June 2018.
Categories
Music magazine (guitar focus)
Monthly
Harris Publications (1980–2003)
Future US, Inc. (2003–2012, 2018–present)
NewBay Media (2012–2018)
129,840[1]
July 1980
United States
New York City
English
History[edit]
Stanley Harris, a New York magazine publisher, launched Guitar World magazine in July 1980. The magazine's debut issue featured bluesman Johnny Winter on the cover and included pieces on the Allman Brothers Band, George Thorogood and pedal steel guitars.[3] As former Editor-in-Chief Brad Tolinski wrote in the magazine's 40th-anniversary issue, "It was a decent start, but the design and editorial content was still a bit lackluster. If you compared it to an amp, GW's first few issues were a sturdy 40-watt tweed combo, when what Harris really wanted was a row of 100-watt Marshalls."[4]
Dennis Page, an advertising rep enlisted to handle the business end of the new magazine, hired a new Editor-in-Chief, Noe Goldwasser [aka Noe Gold]; Gold had his ear to the metal underground, printing the first of many cover stories with Eddie Van Halen. He edited several landmark issues in the magazine's first decade, including GW's fifth anniversary issue in 1985, which featured a cover-to-cover celebration of Jimi Hendrix; and a July 1986 tribute to Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, featuring a 15-page interview with the reclusive legend, along with early note-for-note transcriptions of Page solos to Stairway to Heaven and Rock and Roll.
When Gold left the magazine in 1988, he was replaced by Editor-in-Chief Joe Bosso and Executive Editor Matt Resnicoff. Due to their divergent tastes in music (Bosso preferred covering rock 'n' roll artists while Resnicoff was a jazz-fusion devotee), the magazine suffered from a split-personality approach to its coverage. As publisher Page said, "For a time the magazine lost its way. We started including a lot of jazz, which our readers didn't care about. I knew the key was for us to get younger, not older."
That changed in 1989, when Tolinski was asked to step into the magazine's lead role. "One glance at the May and June 1989 issues sums up the story," Tolinski wrote in 2020. "On one cover, a rather nervous-looking Allan Holdsworth hides timidly behind his Steinberger guitar, and on the next, Zakk Wylde explodes with pure animal fury while the headline screams SPECIAL REPORT! THE YOUNG GUNS OF METAL. GW went from black and white to full-on Technicolor."
After the June issue, GW became a straight-up rock 'n' roll magazine, becoming the publication Stanley Harris and Dennis Page dreamed of – a guitar magazine for "rockers with big hair, tight jeans and pointy guitars." And although rock, hard rock and heavy metal are still covered GW's pages, country guitarists, roots rockers, blues masters and shredders of all stripes have graced its pages, not to mention its cover.
Tolinski remained with the magazine until April 2015, when he was replaced by Jeff Kitts, who had been on GW's editorial staff since the early 1990s. Kitts was replaced by Damian Fanelli, who has been GW's editor-in-chief since June 2018;[5] Fanelli had been with the magazine since 2011, originally as its online managing editor,[6] later becoming its managing editor.