<\/p>\n \u201c\u201cIt was the strangest thing\u2026before you knew it I was having trouble holding a toothbrush, a fork. I couldn\u2019t button my pants,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was no pain, but my hands just wouldn\u2019t work. Of course, there was no way I could play the guitar, which was pretty scary.\u201d<\/p>\n Latest Videos FromMusicRadar<\/p>\n Worst still. There was no off-the-shelf cure, no magic pill to make him better. What worked was his doctor\u2019s \u201cPlan A\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen my doctor diagnosed my condition, he told me there was no real cure, so it wasn\u2019t a slam-dunk that I would see results,\u201d he said. \u201cBut his plan A was to get me playing again.\u201d<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Setzer announced he had the condition in February 2025<\/a>, and first noticed it during the Stray Cats\u2019 tour, when his hand would be cramping up. \u201cIt feels like I\u2019m wearing a pair of gloves when I try to play,\u201d he wrote on Instagram. He was in the early stages of his treatment but had recuperated to the point of being able to tie his shoelaces and hold a pen.<\/p>\n Setzer received treatment for almost a year, undertaking a programme of infusions at Mayo Clinic until he regained the ability to hold a Gretsch guitar<\/a> in his hand and fret some notes \u2013 and regain it he did.<\/p>\n The Stray Cats have returned with their first new material in six years, with two singles, Stampede and Teenage Heaven \u2013 and Setzer is on blistering form. The latter is an old Eddie Cochran tune, and the former has an interesting back story. It\u2019s technically a cover, too \u2013 though a reimagining\/rewrite might be a better descriptor. It was originally a super-short, sub-two-minute surf-rock instrumental by the Scarlets, which was put out on 7\u201d by Prince Records in 1959. There was not much there but it planted the seed in Setzer\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n \u201cI heard the song and thought the guitarist was so good,\u201d he tells Guitar World. \u201cI said, \u2018I want to play that!\u2019 There wasn\u2019t enough of a song there, but I loved the riff, so I basically wrote a song around it.\u201d<\/p>\n The Stray Cats – Stampede (Official Lyric Video) – YouTube Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n That Scarlets riff is a doozie. Setzer gives it a different treatment, a little rawer and more overdriven and throaty than the splish-splash spring reverb soaked original. But it\u2019s a strange riff, with a little something about it that reminds us of something \u2013 one YouTube<\/a> commentator said Master Of Puppets.<\/p>\n And it is an important riff. Pete Antonio and John Sanzone laid this down in 1959. Could they credibly claim to be the first surf-rock band, beating Dick Dale to the punch? Dale did not release Let\u2019s Go Trippin\u2019 until 1961.<\/p>\n Besides his peerless rockabilly playing, this is another of Setzer\u2019s gifts \u2013 he unearth\u2019s classics from rock \u2019n\u2019 roll history that are ripe for rediscovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brian Setzer says that he feels \u201c98 per cent\u201d and is playing as good as he ever has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-599440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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