A technician from the start – she cites Steve Vai as her 13-year-old jam – Strauss made her mark ‘playing’ Dave Murray in all-female tribute band The Iron Maidens. “I actually said: ‘Can I be Adrian Smith?’” she remembers, “but Dave’s smoothness rolling from note to note in bluesy patterns ended up being a huge influence on my playing.” Bigger was to follow in 2014, when Alice Cooper recruited her to play the blonde dervish to his old crow (“I never had to teach her anything. She was on top of the ramp, spinning the guitar around…”). She pricked up ears with the savage gymnastics of 2018’s debut solo album Controlled Chaos, but for Strauss the pinnacle might be her status as the first female player with an Ibanez signature model. “To see my name up there with Vai, Satriani and Gilbert,” she says. “That’s what I’ve dreamed of since the very beginning.”