GUITAR HEADS

THE GODS OF THE SIX-STRING RETURN TO BARNOLDSWICK

Two nights. Five extraordinary musicians. Seven decades of electric-guitar history.

There was a time when the guitar hero ruled the earth. When a battered Stratocaster, a Les Paul and a screaming valve amplifier could change popular culture. Hendrix, Beck, Clapton, Peter Green, Rory Gallagher, Gary Moore, Blackmore, Gilmour — players whose sound was as individual as a human voice.

Guitar Heads exist to celebrate that world.

And in January 2027, following their previous storming appearance, they return to Barnoldswick Music & Arts Centre for TWO NIGHTS, bringing with them one of the most formidable collections of British rock musicians you could realistically squeeze onto our little stage.

At the centre of it all are Jim Kirkpatrick and Paul Rose — two very different guitarists united by a lifetime spent studying, playing and living this music.

Jim Kirkpatrick has become one of the great modern torchbearers of British blues-rock guitar. Best known as guitarist with FM since 2008, his CV runs much deeper. For almost two decades he worked closely with the late Bernie Marsden, accompanying the former Whitesnake guitarist at hundreds of shows as well as writing and recording together. Kirkpatrick recalled that Marsden could plug into virtually anything and still produce an extraordinary sound — an education in the importance of touch, feel and tone that clearly left its mark.

Kirkpatrick is no mere sideman either. He is an accomplished songwriter, singer and solo artist whose blues-rock work has increasingly established his own identity away from FM. His 2025 London show was praised for its "quality musicianship", while his playing can move effortlessly from muscular British blues to slide, melodic rock and long, atmospheric solos. Guitar Heads themselves cite a particularly striking description from Blues Matters: "England's equivalent to Joe Bonamassa."

Then there is Paul Rose.

If Kirkpatrick brings melody, fire and that great British blues-rock lineage, Rose is the wild card — an astonishingly instinctive player whose vocabulary seems to recognise few boundaries. Rock, blues, jazz, country and folk can all appear within the same musical conversation, yet somehow it always sounds unmistakably like Paul Rose.

His reputation amongst fellow musicians is formidable. Pickup pioneer Seymour Duncan said Rose "blew my mind", while Guitar & Bass Magazine described his playing as "ingenious and staggering." His career has taken him from Britain and Europe to New York, where his American trio included musicians associated with Pat Metheny, Al Di Meola, The Brecker Brothers and David Sanborn. More recently he has carried the Rory Gallagher flame with Gerry McAvoy's Band of Friends.

Put Kirkpatrick and Rose together, however, and something else happens.

This isn't two guitarists taking turns to show you how fast they can play. It is a genuine musical partnership — two players listening, answering, pushing and occasionally challenging one another. They know when to attack and, crucially, when to leave space. Their shared history in Band of Friends gives the relationship real depth: a 2021 review of the band praised the performance as "seamless and timeless blues rock", describing Kirkpatrick's performance as superb and the musicianship as "first class."

And Guitar Heads itself is rapidly building a reputation of its own.

One promoter called their original appearance "breath-taking", recalling an audience that simply refused to leave after the encores — forcing the band back onto the stage for more, something he said hadn't happened there in 17 years. Another live review described more than two hours in which Guitar Heads "delight, surprise and astonish", while a 2024 review went even further, calling them "quite possibly one of the best covers bands" the writer had ever seen.

But calling Guitar Heads a covers band almost misses the point.

This is closer to a living history of the electric guitar, performed by musicians who understand exactly why these records mattered in the first place.

The repertoire can travel from Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, The Shadows and Cream through Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Rory Gallagher, Gary Moore, Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple and AC/DC, with excursions into Steely Dan, The Beatles, Santana, The Who and beyond. A recent 2026 show at London's Half Moon included everything from Reelin' In The Years, The Green Manalishi and Apache to Hocus Pocus, Albatross, Parisienne Walkways, Won't Get Fooled Again and Free Bird.

And the project is evolving. Guitar Heads have now released two full-length albums. The Rockfield Sessions was recorded live at the legendary Rockfield Studios in Wales, while its follow-up, Still Rockin' in the Free World, arrived in 2026. This is increasingly a band with its own story rather than simply an occasional gathering of famous sidemen.

Behind Jim and Paul is an engine room most rock bands would kill for.

Chris Childs, bassist with Thunder since 1996 and also a member of Tyketto, provides the enormous bottom end, while Leon Cave, drummer with Status Quo for more than a decade, supplies the kind of unfussy, heavyweight groove that allows two great guitarists the freedom to fly. Above it all comes Nick Foley's Hammond organ — swirling, growling and roaring through the spaces between the guitars, bringing that unmistakable Deep Purple/Fleetwood Mac/late-'60s-and-'70s texture to the sound.

Recent appearances have only strengthened the band's reputation. Demand for their after-show performance at WinterStorm 2025 was sufficient for organisers to move Guitar Heads onto the festival's main stage, while a subsequent review described their set as a "highly entertaining and appreciated finale."

So forget wigs. Forget costumes. Forget musicians pretending to be somebody else.

Guitar Heads is about the music.

It is about that moment when a Les Paul hits an overdriven amplifier. The cry of a Stratocaster. The Leslie beginning to spin behind a Hammond. A rhythm section locking into a riff and two world-class guitarists looking across the stage at one another because they both know exactly where the music is about to go.

Jim Kirkpatrick. Paul Rose. Chris Childs. Leon Cave. Nick Foley.

Five musicians with thousands of gigs behind them, celebrating the records and players that made generations of us fall hopelessly in love with the electric guitar.

And in January, they're bringing the whole glorious racket back to the tiny cellar at Barnoldswick Music & Arts Centre — for TWO NIGHTS.

Turn it up. Guitar Heads are back.