“I was 15 when we met – I was recording demos for my first record, and he was working with his brother, Jimmie Vaughan”: Eric Gales on the riffs that changed his life – and meeting Stevie Ray Vaughan as a teenager

Eric Gales plays a Magneto signature guitar in the Guitar World studio.

Watching leftie master Eric Gales play – in all his idiosyncratic glory – is a thing of breathtaking beauty. And we got to see it firsthand when he dropped by Guitar World HQ in NYC a few months back.

He came here to share, explain and play some of the famous riffs that have informed his playing – everything from Jimi Hendrix to Stevie Ray Vaughan to Robin Trower. Not surprisingly, every riff he played had a goodly supply of “total Eric Gales” thrown into the mix.