A music magazine that’s enough to wake the dead

Guitar World magazine turns 25 this year, and it’s celebrating with an anniversary issue that is the literary equivalent of a screaming, shrieking guitar solo with the amp turned to 11 and enough feedback to make your ears bleed.

And this is altogether fitting and proper because Guitar World is not only America’s most popular guitar magazine, it’s also the guitar mag that isn’t afraid to take things one step too far -- and then go a couple of steps further. It is the magazine that conducted an interview with guitar god Jimi Hendrix despite the inconvenient fact that Hendrix had been dead for decades.

“I thought, ‘What would it be like to talk to Jimi Hendrix?’ ” recalls Brad Tolinski, Guitar World’s editor in chief. “And then I said, ‘Let’s try to talk to Jimi Hendrix. Let’s have a seance!’ ”

This brainstorm occurred in 1993 -- 23 years after Hendrix’s death and about five years after Tolinski was hired to liven up a lackluster guitar magazine started by a cheesy New York publisher as a way to cash in on the rock market.

Tolinski borrowed one of Hendrix’s Flying V guitars from the Hard Rock Cafe and acquired an amulet allegedly made from a lock of Hendrix’s hair. Accompanied by a gaggle of Hendrix acolytes and a soothsayer named Zena, Tolinski carried these holy relics to Electric Ladyland, the New York studio where Hendrix recorded the 1968 album named after the studio.

As Tolinski and friends circled the sacred guitar, shut their eyes and held hands, Zena contacted Hendrix. Jimi issued a warning against dope and booze, but when the Guitar World folks asked technical questions about his greatest solos, the phone lines to the afterlife got fuzzy.

In other words, the interview was a dud. But Tolinski had persuaded “Good Morning America” to cover the seance, so at least it worked as a publicity stunt.

“We’re shameless,” he explains.

Shamelessness is a big part of what makes Guitar World fun, and the 25th anniversary issue is a shameless chronicle of shameless stunts.

It recounts the story of Guitar World’s absurd “insect-themed” issue in 2001, which featured stories on the Beatles and the rap-metal band Papa Roach.

And its 1999 3-D issue, which included cardboard glasses that enabled readers to eyeball a 3-D cover photo that showed one guy from Limp Bizkit yelling into the ear of another guy from Limp Bizkit, whose eyes seem to be popping out of his head.

But all this tomfoolery serves merely to disguise the fact that Guitar World is really a serious educational magazine. Not only does it publish interviews with great guitarists, it has also taught a generation the finer points of playing rock guitar.

In fact, a case can be made that Guitar World and its spinoff mags -- Bass Guitar, Guitar World Acoustic and Guitar Legends -- are among America’s most effective educational publications for teenage boys, who make up a large portion of GW’s 200,000 circulation.

“We get them to pick up the instrument, play the instrument, express themselves and read,” says Tolinski.

Guitar World teaches guitar playing by publishing elaborate note-by-note transcriptions of the guitar parts of many of the greatest songs in rock history.

When GW began printing them in 1986, it changed the way readers relate to the magazine, as the anniversary issue wryly notes: “Like a dirty magazine, Guitar World became a publication readers would stare at for hours in private, while perfecting their technique.”

The man behind GW’s transcriptions is Andy Aledort, who is, Tolinski says, “a sort of mystical figure for musicians.”

Now 48, Aledort played rock and jazz guitar in various New York bands in the 1970s. After a hand injury temporarily ended his career as a guitarist, he went into the sheet music business and ended up pretty much inventing the system of rock guitar transcription now used by music publishers.

Now that the 25th anniversary issue is out, Guitar World’s staff is working on the next issue, a tribute to “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, the former guitarist for the heavy-metal band Pantera who was shot and killed by a crazed fan in Ohio last month while playing with his new band, Damageplan.

“I was friends with Dimebag for 12 years,” says Tolinski. “Dime was really part of the family.”

Dimebag appeared on seven Guitar World covers, the most memorable coming last March when the magazine arranged for Dime to meet Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist, Zakk Wylde, who shared Dime’s love of high-spirited high jinks. The meeting took place at Dime’s house in Texas with two GW reporters observing.

“They got the reporters totally drunk and threw them in the back of the car,” Tolinski says. “Then they went on a joy ride in Dime’s neighborhood. And on Dime’s lawn was a large evergreen tree, and they decided to smash into it until it fell over.”

Leaving the car parked atop the fallen fir, Dime escorted his guests inside, where they encountered a half-dozen local striptease artists.

Obviously he was more than a mere guitar god. He was also a thoughtful and hospitable host.

Maybe it’s time for another Guitar World seance.