With their successful Clockwork Angels tour well underway, Alex Lifeson of Rush recently told Guitar World magazine that things were not always so upbeat. When recalling the band’s Caress of Steel tour he said, “We were already extremely in debt, and it was just getting worse and worse. The crowds were getting smaller and there didn’t seem to be much interest in the album at the time. Everybody around was concerned about what the future was going to be. So there was a lot of reflection. I thought, Well, you know, I guess I could be a plumber again if I had to…”

On March 26 blues aficionado Joe Bonamassa will release his new live CD and DVD. But this time we will be treated to a more mellow side of the guitarist. An Acoustic Evening at the Vienna Opera House will showcase Joe doing acoustic interpretations of songs from his entire career. Says Joe to Billboard: "We've been kind of woodshedding the acoustic thing for many years. I do a little bit in the live show, but this is the first time I ever decided to do a full-on, whole-hog acoustic show."

It appears that guitar master Eddie Van Halen will make a guest appearance on rapper LL Cool J's upcoming album Authentic. Eddie posted a picture on Twitter of him and LL Cool J sitting infront of a mixing console, with the simple message "Authentic 4.30.13."

Green Day have done their first full live show since Billie Joe Armstrong's stint in rehab. The punk trio took the stage at South By Southwest on March 15, playing a two-hour set at Austin's Moody Theater. Opening with "99 Revolutions," the first half of the show contained quite a bit of new material from the band's recent trio of albums ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, and ¡Tré!, while the latter part of the show was more of a greatest hits set, including cover snippets of "Sweet Child O' Mine," and "Highway to Hell."

Former Gn'R bassist Duff McKagan writes on his blog for Seattle Weekly about an incident that took place while he was visiting Tokyo. McKagan describes how he was walking around in the Harajuku area of Tokyo, in order to familiarize himself with the area before a visit from his daughters. The bassist writes: "Harajuku is connected by streets lined with themes shops – punk rock clothes, pastel-only skirt shops, early 80s beat-boy clothing, Star Wars. It becomes obvious that many of the shirts are bootlegs."

The British folk-rock legend and guitar stylist visited the Gibson bus while at SXSW and checked out the J-35. According to USA Today’s Mike Snider, Thompson was impressed.

In Your Dreams, the documentary that follows the making of Stevie Nicks' latest album of the same name, will be screened in dozens of US cinemas for one night only on April 2.

With a new album on the way and Chickenfoot currently on hiatus pending their next move, it seems Joe Satriani has been doing a little spring cleaning: he's clearing out over 65 items from his private collection (including Gibson Custom Shop gear).

Alice Cooper guitarist, Australian-born Orianthi, says she's settled into the groove after a tense few shows where her main concern was "making sure I didn't run into Frankenstein or get stabbed."

David Coverdale is kicking around ideas for a possible new Whitesnake album following the success of Forevermore.