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EXPLORE THE BEAUTY & HERITAGE OF GIBSON’S LEGENDARY FAMILY OF ELECTRICS
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THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO GIBSON’S GREATEST ELECTRIC GUITAR
LES PAUL HISTORY PROTOTYPES & RARITIES GOLDTOPS PICKUPS & HARDWARE CUSTOMS CUSTOMS TONE TWEAKS JUNIORS MAINTENANCE & SETUP SUNBURST STANDARDS PLAYER INTERVIEWS GUITAR GALLERIES
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his is the guitar we all wanted to own. Poring over the pages of Guitarist magazine magazine as a teenager it was the images of Les Pauls that I lingered t he longest over. over. Something about this particular model of electric guitar still conjures magic of a unique kind, no matter how many you come into contact with over the years. Why? As always, the music made with this guitar provides the most compelling answer. answer. When you listen to Eric Clapton play Hideaway on on the celebrated ‘Beano’ album with t he Bluesbreakers, Bluesbreakers, the sound of his Sunburst Les Paul Standard t hrough an absolutely absolutely cranked Marshall Ma rshall combo is the very essence of all t hat is viscerally exciting about guitar. guita r. Likewise you only have have to picture Leslie West playing a Les Paul Junior at Woodstock to hear, in your mind, one of the other great signature tones in electric guitar – the full-throated howl of a P-90. Given Given all t hat, it’s ironic then that none of the varia nts of the Les Paul was orig inally intended i ntended to scream – but rather to smoothly intone the cool, pithy phrases of jazz. It’s testament to Gibson (and (and Les Paul’s) Paul’s) design design that t hat it has shone in every role thrown at it since then. Like other guitars, there are good ones and bad ones. The best, arg uably, uably, are rather more subtle of voice than the L es Paul’s powerful reputation might suggest. Inside this issue, you’ll get inside the tonewoods, hardware and heritage that make this king of electric guitars guita rs such a formidable musical musical tool – a nd a tonal touchstone for all eras of rock ’n’ roll.
Jamie Dickson, Editor Editor
Editor Jamie Dickson Managing Editor Lucy Rice Art Editors Paul Tysall, Richard Hood, Luke O’Neill
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Other contributors include: Tony Bacon, Owen Bailey,
Simon Bradley, Dave Burrluck, Simon L aw, David Mead, Ed Mitchell, Greg Prato, Davina Rungasamy, Mick Taylor, Henry Yates
Chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne Non-executive chairman Peter Allen Penny Ladkin-Brand
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Neil Godwin, Will Ireland, Simon Lees, Rob Monk, Kevin Nixon, Jonathan Roncalato, Joby Sessions, Phil Sowels, Jesse Wild, Jeff Yeager
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G u i t a r i s t magazine would like to thank World Guitars, and
the kind owner of the Gibson Mark Knopfler 1958 Les Paul Standard above, for the loan of this stellar guitar
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Les Paul Introduction Les Paul Biography Henry Juszkiewicz Interview Les Paul Milestone Models Les Paul Guitar Anatomy Les Paul Tones
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Introduction 1952 Gibson Les Paul 1953 Gibson Les Paul Dream Rigs : 1956 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop & 1959 Fender Champ 1957 Gibson Les Paul
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Introduction History 1955 ‘Black Beauty’ Dream Rigs : 1969 Gibson Les Paul Custom & Marshall JTM45 Reissue Peter Frampton: Gibson Les Paul Custom PAF Pickups
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Introduction History 1958 Les Paul Standard Dream Rigs : 1958 Gibson Les Paul Standard & 1958 Fender Super 1959 Gibson Les Paul Bench Test 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard Kirk Hammett: ‘Greeny’ Les Paul
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Introduction History 1955 Gibson Les Paul Junior 1959 Gibson Les Paul Junior P-90 Pickups
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Introduction Gary Moore Jimmy Page Slash Don Felder
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TRIBUTE
A L I F E L E S ORDINARY Lester William William Polsfuss – bette betterr known as Les Pau l – was one of the greatest players the world has ever seen. But the guitar that still bears h is name also wen wentt on to achieve a legendary status. This is the story of both the man and the machine © A N D R E W L E P L E Y / R E D F E R N S
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ester William Polsfuss was born June 9 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Known throughout his life variously as Red Hot Red, Rhubarb Red, The Wizard Of Wisconsin and of course Les Paul, he holds the unique position of being one of the forefathers of the solidbody electric guitar, and indeed its most enduring and successful endorsee of all time. On top of that, he was an electronics innovator who helped shape recorded music as we know it, not to mention a stellar guitarist and an international star in his own right. Les passed away on 13 August 2009, aged 94. Here, we retrace an extraordinary life in music…
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GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
WA W A V E S A H E A D Necessity is the mother of invention, and thankfully Lester’s mother mother let him go ahead and invent! Child tinkerer to electronics innovator – a whistle-stop tour tour from Rhubarb Red to Les Pau l
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he young Lester Polsfuss was obsessed with music and tinkering with things in order to make sounds from the get-go. As he told Guitarist early in 2009: “What started me pulling things apart, was that we had a Player Piano in the living room [when aged nine, Les famously modified the cut-out holes to see what effect it would have on the music], a Victrola [basically, a gramophone in a cabinet], a radio a nd a telephone.” Part of Les’s fixation was driven by an interest in radio. He’d learned how to make a crystal set [a simple radio receiver] and hung around the transmitter to listen, where he was soon noticed. “The next thing I know I’m studying electronics and I’m heading towards making a recording device,” he told us. “It’s something that surely wasn’t around Waukesha when I was nine years old! There wasn’t such a thing as a recording device, so I had to build it. I went out to the radio station that was just about to go on air and I started
Les & Recording LES BEGAN EXPERIMENTING WITH
recording in his early teens. “My father happened to own a garage,” he recalled, “and he had equipment and a lot of parts. It was up to me figure out how to make some kind of device to record on, so down at the garage I put together my first recording machine.” Les worked out how to make a Cadillac flywheel into a turntable and used a nail to cut grooves into celluloid. “The next thing was to make a pickup, which I made out of the telephone receiver. I played it through my mother’s speaker in the radio. They weren’t the best quality in the world, but it was the beginning.”
Words Mick Taylor
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talking to the engineer, and he started to teach me electronics.” A LOUDER GUITAR Alongside his interest in recording, it soon became apparent that Lester also had another little problem to solve. Performing as Red Hot Red around 1928-9 at a barbecue stand half way between Waukesha and Milwaukee, he decided to address a common problem, for which we should all thank him: the need to get more volume out of the guitar… “I talked the owner into letting me build a PA system,” explained Les, “and the story was that somebody in the back seat of a car said, Red, your voice is fine, your harmonica’s fine and your jokes are funny, but the guitar isn’t loud enough! “The way it started was that when I took a phonograph pickup a nd jabbed it into the front of the guitar, I had a guitar that was amplified, but I had a lot of feedback,” he continued. “So I filled it with tablecloths and socks and everything
HISTORY |LES
P A U L
Les became obsessed with recording music at a young age and it fuelled
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I could think of; in the end I filled it up with plaster of Paris, none of that worked, and I finally destroyed the guitar. I decided to pick the most dense material that I could find, and put a string on it, so I found a piece of railroad track that was about two and a half feet long and a piece of wood two and a half feet long. I placed a part of the telephone under the strings, fed it into the radio and I’m running to my mother and saying, I’ve got it! And my mother says, ‘The day you see a cowboy on a horse playing a railroad track…’ She grounded that idea in a hurry. So that went out the window and I said, ‘Well, then I’ve got to get something that’s not heavy…’” What resulted, eventually, after much experimentation was the groundbreaking Log concept, about which you can read more on page 10. Rewind to 1932 and Les left high school early to join Joe Wolverton as Sunny Joe and Rhubarb Red: their radio broadcasts beamed across the nation , helping the USA to escape in part from the struggles of the great depression. The following year in Chicago, Les would work playing country and good-time music on daytime radio, then indulge his love of jazz for fun, rubbing shoulders with greats such as Art Tatum and Django Reinhardt in the evenings. The latter’s playing had the most impact on Les’s own style. It was in 1936 that he produced his first recordings, then in 1938 he moved to New York (where (where he worked weekends at Epiphone and developed the Log) and again to Los Angeles in 1942, as hi s skills and demand as a player increased. He was soon playing and recording with the likes of Bing Crosby – who supported and encouraged Les’s home studio development – The Andrews Sister s and many other big names of the period. It was also during the mid-1940s that Les was rubbing shoulders with other pioneers of the music world, including the likes of Leo Fender and Paul Bigsby. “I met both of them in my back yard,” recalled Les. “They came over to listen to people I was recording in Los Angeles. Neither one of them played an instrument and they needed to get the feedback from the player. My studio was just my garage in the backyard and it was a perfect place for us to sit and talk and chat for hours about how to make an electric guitar and an amplifier to suit the customer.”
his creativity
THE NEW SOUND It was around this time that Les was motivated to make the next big step forward in his sound. “My mother came to visit,” he recal led. “She said, ‘I heard you on the radio last night’. I said, ‘I wasn’t playing on the radio, I was here playing with The Andrews Sisters’. She says, ‘Well you should do something about it, because they’re sounding just like you’. So I got thinking about it, gave my notice, and went to my garage and said, ‘I’m not coming out of that garage until I have a sound that’s different from anybody else’. It took a couple of years of working on ideas; new sounds, a new way of recording. I didn’t know it was going to change the world, but I knew it was going to make some noise!” What Les had been working on was developing his revolutionary recording style where he could layer guitar parts, speed them up and slow them down and employ techniques such as delay, phasing and flanging – creating a totally unique sonic palette for him to work with. Capitol records released Lover released Lover (When You’re Near Me) in Me) in 1948 and a whole new sound was born. It was the first use of multitrac k recording as we know it, using equipment Les had put together himself. Later that year, a serious car crash meant Les nearly lost use of his picking arm, but he famously requested that the arm be reset in the playing position!
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After a period of convalescence, L es released his first self-recorded music with his then-wife Mary Ford (née Iris Colleen Summers) in the early fifties; the couple had met through Gene Autry in 1946. With the combination of Les’s incredible playing, unique sound and Mary’s pure, perfect-harmony vocals, they were destined to be international stars. Listening to those cuts now – How – How High The Moon, Moon, Tiger Rag and Mockin’ and Mockin’ Bird Hill – Hill – and it beggars belief to think that Les not only had the musical vision to imagine the sounds in the first place, but also the technical desire and tenacity to physically create and record them. It was certainly an incredible journey, a long way from the nine-year-old kid pulling apart his mother’s piano. LES WHO? So how did the man himself feel, several decades later, if somebody thought Les Paul was ‘just’ a guitar, and not a man behind the inst rument? “That doesn’t bother me at all,” he laughed. “That’s not my goal in life; to go down in history as something other than just another guy. As far as I’m concerned, I’m just a guitar player and my job is to go out there and play and entertain and do my thing. That’s it. If I have to go around telling everyone how great I am, then there’s something wrong with my act.”
GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
ROCK SOLI D Take a piece of 4 x 4, attach sides, strings, a bridge and a pickup. pickup. This T his is t he future of rock ’n’ ’n’ roll – anyone anyone interested? interested?
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ry to imagine, if you can, going to see the world’s most respected telephone company, around 20 years ago. You hand them a crude piece of plastic with an aerial sticking out of the top a nd say, ‘Hey, ‘Hey, I’ve designed this thing called a mobile telephone, and everyone is going to come to rely on one before you know it’. it’. After they stop laughing under their breath, they thank you for your interest in their company company and send you on your way. So it was for Les Paul and the solidbody guitar in the mid-1940s. GOING ELECTRIC
Gibson wasn’t averse to the electric guitar per se – the company introduced its first electric way back in 1935 with the metal-bodied E-150 Hawaiian guitar – but the solidbody was a totally different matter. In Gibson’s view, guitar making was high craftsmanship where traditional principles reigned supreme. As it happened, Gibson employee Walt Fuller designed the pickup that began it all, after being told to emulate Rickenbacker’s Rickenbacker’s horseshoe design of 1932. The E-150 had a small, cast-aluminium body and Gibson later applied for a patent that, at its essence, negated the guitar’s body, relying solely on the electric pickup for sound. “Walt was the one they chose to be in charge of the electric guitar,” Les told us earlier this year. “He went over to the library and I went with him. He had always worked with wood and he didn’t know anything about electronics, so that whole thing had to start from
scratch: from the beginning. That was back in the early thirtie s.” Fitting Fuller’s new pickup to a regular archtop, the 1936 ES-150 was born, the first commercially significant nonHawaiian-style electric guitar. Given both the EH and ES models’ success, quite how it took another decade-and-a-half for the electric solidbody to emerge is anyone’s guess, not least Les, whose early experiments had convinced him a solid body was the way forward. By 1939 the electric guitar was gaining popularity. Les was a noted player himself who by that time and had met the electric instrument’s leading exponent, Charlie Christian – guitarist with the Benny Goodman band – at a Gibson clinic, surely firing his belief in the electric guitar’s future. As his career progressed and he had greater access to materials and equipment, Les’s experiments were many and varied. The most notorious and well documented was the Heath-Robinsonstyle contraption known affectionately as The Log, taken to Gibson as early as 1946, but rejected. It was a 4 x 4-inch piece of pine with t he sides of an Epiphone archtop bolted on. To Les the premise was simple, simple, as he explained to us in early 2009. “I thought, I’ve got to go to something not heavy, but that’s very dense, very sturdy, that’s going to sustain the sound, and it’s gotta be something you love when you hold it, and immediately thought of something like a woman! Instead of an ironing board or a stick of wood with string on it, it would say something cosmetically as well as musically.”
Words Mick Taylor
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THE PLANK TAKES OFF
Les’s latter-day memories were no doubt coloured by history and most likely extrapolated by legend, not least the differing account of who was actually responsible for the eventual Gibson Les Paul solidbody design. One account says it was all Les, the other suggests a stronger guiding hand from Gibson – notably 1950-1966 president Ted McCarty. “I may have gone through at least 11 presidents and 10 years of trying to convince Gibson they should make this solidbody electric guitar,” Les told us. “For 10 years, when I wasn’t around, they would talk about the character with the broomstick with pickups on it… They made fun of it and didn’t take it seriously. It wasn’t until 1950/51, until I talked to Maurice Berlin and he was chairman of the board and he ran the whole Chicago Musical Instr ument company, which included Gibson. He gave me full reign to do what I wished to do, and then came in the different presidents of Gibson and there were a lot of them. Some of them were not as good as others, some of them were just great.” Whatever the minutiae, the cold fact is that Gibson’s reluctance to accept the solidbody electric guitar as a serious musical instrument let a certain Clarence Leo Fender in the door with his rudimentary Broadcaster in 1950. Gibson initially mocked it as the plank, but soon took notice as its popularity took hold. It was time to call that character with the broomstick – turn the page to see what happened next…
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J O N S I E V E R T / M I C H A E L O C H S A R C H I V E S / G E T T Y I M A G E S
HISTORY |
L E S
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Les and The Log – the guitar that went at least some way to convince Gibson of the future
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GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
T HE GUI TA R LES NEVER LIKED? It
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Les
really really think of the Gibson Les Paul g uitar? uitar?
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ry any signature model guitar today and you’ll notice almost all of them have a few (what we might politely call) idiosyncratic features. Of course, these are precisely what the signature player has requested. To the rest of us, however, that fretless fingerboard, five-pickup layout, or speckled vermilion crossbones finish might seem, at best, odd and, at worst, completely mad.
Words Tony Bacon
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Bear that in mind, and the story of the original Gibson Les Paul begins to make more sense. Les was just like any of us: he wanted his guitar to be personal, to work for him. He just happened to be a bit handier with the toolkit than most. We spoke to Les, in 2008: “I had in mind a
HISTORY |LES
guitar that sustained and reproduced the sound of the string with nothing added: no distortion, no change in the response.” That was Les talking to me about his frustration with the hollowbody electrics of the 30s and 40s, and the way they suffered from feedback and poor tone. “I wanted the string to do its thing,” he explained. “No top vibrating, no added enhancement – either advantageous or disadvantageous. I wanted to be sure that you just plucked the string and that’s what you heard. That was my whole whole idea. So I just went on my way.” Les continued to go his own way throughout his life and nowhere was he more obstinate and self-assured than with his beloved guitars. Early on, in 1946 or so, Les punted one of his experimental electrics to the Gibson company. It It was the L og, or the Clunker, or some other name Les liked the sound of. Whatever the name, he’d lashed together a peculiar workhorse. The body had a solid-wood centre, and he’d hacked two sides from an archtop and attached them, so it at least looked like a guitar. To Gibson, Les was just another mad musician with a strange idea. The local paper ran a story about this trend, how Gibson had files and files of crazy ideas from outsiders – enough “to create the combined pandemonium of a four-alarm fire, dog fight, curfew chorus, and mouse-frightened female”. Among them was Les’s oddball semi-solid electric guitar. And then Fender happened.
E X P R E S S / G E T T Y I M A G E S
PLAYING CATCH�UP Gibson needed to design its own solidbody electric to compete with the upstart Telecaster and company boss Ted McCarty had a lightbulb moment. He thought of Les Paul. Not as a guitar designer, but as the famous guitarist who’d just scored a massive number one pop hit Moon. with How with How High The Moon. Ted had his team design a Gibson solidbody electric and then went off to find Les and make what we’d recognise today as an endorsement deal. The Gibson Les Paul of 1952 was the first modern signature model electric guitar. Once the new Goldtop started to come off Gibson’s line, Ted sent Les his samples. Almost immediately Les set to work, hacking them up to his own requirements. Gibson’s team had designed the Les Paul for their own purposes: to appeal to as
P A U L
“I was cutting them up and modifying the pickups, bridges, controls, and just about everything else. Alll the Al the thin things gs tha thatt I wa wante nted d just just ga gave ve the them m a lo lott of of grey grey hairs up there at Gibson” LES PAUL
Even the early Goldtops he had were heavily modded in Les’s workshop
many players as possible. Les , however, wanted a guitar that worked for him. Any photograph you see of Les playing Les Pauls in the 50s (and later) shows clearly that he had his own ideas about what a solidbody electric guitar should be – usually contrary to Gibson’s ideas. Gibson made some of Les’s personal instruments, especially the Customs, with flat tops rather than the production carved tops, or with fewer than the four standard control knobs. And still Les nearly always modified them in some way. He might wire in a Gretsch pickup instead of the original P-90. Or perhaps he’d install a crude vibrato in place of the bridge. How about replacing Gibson’s gold knobs with chicken-head ones? Les had fun with tools. “In the 1950s, Gibson was shooting guitars to me all the time,” he said, “and I was still cutting them up and modifying the pickups, bridges, controls and just about everything else. All the things that
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I wanted just gave them a lot of grey hairs up there at Gibson.” You’ll You’ll know the story about Gibson dumping the original Les Paul models and replacing them with the SGs – and at first Gibson called them Les Pauls. Les didn’t much care for this. He didn’t like the shape, the horns, the cutaway, and the neck was too skinny. He posed with them in official 1960s Gibson promo shots and Now, on the cover of his album Les album Les Paul Now, yet when he played played the occasional live appearance, he’d still use his old-style Gibson Les Pauls – modified and muckedabout-with to suit. By 1963, L es Paul’s name was gone from the new models and they continued officially as SGs. Later in the sixties, Gibson relented and reissued the original single-cut Les Pauls, because Eric, Jimmy, Peter and the rest had shown just what they could do. Gibson also decided to produce some new Les Paul models t hat were much closer to the guitars that Les liked to play. These were the Professional and the Personal.
GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
One of Les ’s out-of-step preferences was for low-impedance pickups. He was pretty much on his own. Most electric guitars and guitar-related equipment were (and still are) high-impedance. Lowimpedance offers wide-ranging tone, but that’s not necessarily to everyone’s taste. MASS APPEAL
M I C H A E L O C H S A R C H I V E S / G E T T Y I M A G E S
1 1. Suited
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plugged in – Les Paul circa 1950
2. “All
the things
that I wanted just gave them a lot of grey hairs up there at Gibson”
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When Les went to Gibson in 1967 to discuss the reissues, he talked with passion about his low-impedance pickups and how Gibson should use them. Remarkably, he convinced them to go ahead. The Personal was, as the name implied, like one of Les’s own modified Les Paul guitars, right down to the strange microphone socket on the body. Both the Professional and Personal had complex controls, and you couldn’t help but think they were built for recording engineers rather than guitarists. There was an 11-position Decade control “to tune high frequencies”, a three-position tone selector to create various in and out-ofcircuit mixes, and a pickup phase switch. The Personal even provided a volume control for that handy mic input. The Personal and Professional were not successful and didn’t last long. Nor did the similar Recording models. The commercial lesson for Gibson was clear: make the Les Paul models that players want, not the ones that Les himself wants. Les continued to modify and rewire and retrofit and generally fiddle with all his guitars, most of which no one else saw. Sometimes, those who went to see him live were treated to what he called The Les Paulverizer. This was something like the Les Paul Personal, only even more, er, personal. It had the low-impedance pickups, of course, plus a bank of knobs and an onboard tape-loop controller that he’d use to wow the audience with as Les conjured an approximation of his famous overdubbed guitar sound onstage. When I last spoke to Les in 2008 and asked him what he’d like Gibson to change on the current Les Pauls, he said. “Oh gee, when you’ve got a classic like this, I don’t think I’d have done it any differently. But there were a lot of little things I fought for and never got, things probably that were more important, small things. Not that there was anything wrong with the guitar we had then. We’ve just learned over the years how to make them even bett er.” er.”
R I C H A R D E . A A R O N / R E D F E R N S
GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
LES & HENRY Les Paul i s linked so inextricably inextricably with Gibson, the two have b ecome synonymous. synonymous. The Man at the top of the company shares his thoughts thoughts
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enry Juszkiewicz is the CEO of Gibson Guitars who, along with two others, bought the company back in 1986. He’s known and worked closely with Les Paul for many years, making him one of the few people who can say that he knew this legendary figure both from a business and personal standpoint. We spoke with Juszkiewicz to recount his memories of the great man Les… What’s your take on Le s’s contribution to the guitar?
“Although Les is thought of first and foremost as a guitarist and designer of the Les Paul Model guitar, he was also a groundbreaker in other music-related areas, such as recording. He really was the first one to put effects on guitar tracks. He used
Words Greg Prato
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to use a little box that he called the Les Paulverizer in his act. Well it wasn’t a little box – behind the curtai n, there was a massive amount of tape drives and other things, so he was doing sound-on-sound, delays, reverb – none of those things were even in music, let alone on top of a guitar. So if you hear the Les Paul and Mary Ford tracks, you’ll hear this very rich sound. At that point in time, you have to remember, recording studios weren’t even multitrack. So how was this incredible sound happening? The guy was the father of
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HISTORY |LES
guitar effects, the father of the recording studio that made mix-downs in stereo possible. The way I see it, every piece of modern music you hear that has a guitar in it has a little piece of Les Paul and his inventiveness in it too.”
perform was magic, but he also had this very salty, New Jersey-sort of sense of humour – he’d be ripping it up a nd throwing stuff at you!”
Did Les’s inventiveness continue as he grew older?
“Les started pursuing the state of t he instrument. There was a time in his professional life when he was already doing successful radio gigs, and he was doing country music. Then he worked for many years, until he got to the state of having the Log, which actually was developed in New York City in the Epiphone factory, on 14th 14th Street . They didn’t work on weekends, so they’d let Les come in, and hack around with their tools and so forth. He spent many weekends experimenting and trying different things, until he hit on something that he felt was perfect. So that was the original ‘Les Paul’, and with some ornamentation, it became the Les Paul
“He’s like a guy that has a 50-year future view. He was always talking about what was going to happen, the way things should be. One example I remember, back in the 1980s he said, ‘Henry, all this moving mechanics in recording and playback is all going to be gone. It’s all going to be chips: solid-state’. I said, ‘I don’t know Les, it’s not looking that way’. And today, we have solid-state drives and solid-state mp3 players. I can give you many examples. Here’s a guy that had that vision, which very few people have. And then, above all that, he had the ability to make that vision real. He was able to bring
So how did the Les Paul Model guitar come about?
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“The reality is in 1959 – which was six years after they did the dea l and started producing these guitars – they only sold 300 units. That guitar really didn’t become popular until 1965 – I think Mike Bloomfield [and Eric Clapton – Ed] was responsible for sort of bringing the Les Paul into the rock ’n’ roll era. And it just exploded at that point.” Did Les keep up on all the new Les Paul models that appeared?
“Absolutely. “Absolutely. We’d provide him with one of every new model we made. And every once in a while, we ’d be late shipping him one. I’d personally get a call, saying, ‘I was down at the store Henry, and I saw this and I don’t have one. Why didn’t you send it to me?’ I’d be like, ‘Les, it was just introduced a week ago – it’s coming!’ But yeah, he was on top of it – he was always talking to retailers and always questioning people at his gigs. His mind was bright and really on top
“He was just a great guy – a warm man. But also, an inventor and a revolutionary – somebody who helped helped musicians from all walks of life. I don’t care what you did: if you were an engineer, a trumpet t rumpet player, player, or a singer – he invented the multitrack recorder. And if you were a guitar player, he invented your life with the electric guitar” RICHIE SAMBORA
that and actually affect it and popularise it. What a phenomenal individual.”
guitar in the early fifties, and so it is today. It’s our most popular model by far.”
of what was going on – and still forecasting future technologies.”
How would you describe Les as a person?
How did Les get involved with Gibson?
What would you say is Les’s best track?
“Les loved the Gibson instrument, and early on in his career, the instrument was the L5. It still is kind of the acoustic instrument. It’s a carved top – like a great violin – an exquisite design. So that was his guitar of choice – he would go up to Kalamazoo and get the guitars personally, and got to know people at the plant. When he finally invented a guitar that he felt was worthy, he came to Gibson and said, ‘Why don’t we do this together?’ Gibson said, ‘No way! This is a weird-looking guitar – who wants a piece of wood?’ It’s a typical response to something new in the music industry. So he kept coming back. And then final ly, when he had shows [on radio and TV] they said, ‘Okay, you’re famous, we’ll do it just because you’re famous – but we still don’t like the guitar.’
“I don’t know which one is the most commercially successful, but How but How High The Moon by Moon by him and Mary Ford is my favourite. But he has several compilation CDs that have 30 or 40 songs on there, and there’s also some video material.”
“He was a very warm and great individual. One of the things that made an impression on me was how much he loved pe ople and how much he loved his audience. You could be talking about a $100 million deal, a five year old comes in to ask for an autograph and everything stops. The real class guys, they have respect for their audience. You could be anybody and you walk up and ask for his time or ask him a question, and Les would share that. You saw that every time he played at the Iridium [the New York City venue where Les performed weekly]. People would bring guita rs for him to sign and he’d chat with them for half an hour. I think that made him the consummate entertainer, because he related to people. To see him
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How would you like Les Paul to be remembered by future generations? “I think as the father of modern guitar – maybe even modern music to a certain extent. Some of the things he started go beyond the instrument and the g uitar player, but had an impact on modern music in general. Maybe there are players that are greater than Les – or greater entertainers or inventors – but he covered all the bases. And he had a profound impact on what we hea r today.”
GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
The Les Paul took six years and a
FROM F IR S T TO ’BURST LES PAUL MODEL 195 2�1 953
series of s ignificant design revisions before Gibson hit on what many regard as the high-water mark of the electric solidbody guitar. We go back to 1952 and take a look…
L E S PAU L M OD EL 195 3�19 55
L ES PAU L M O DE L 195 5�1 957
L E S PAU L M OD EL 195 7�19 58
GIBSON GOT SOME THINGS right at the
LATE 1953 SAW THE Ted McCarty-
IF INTONATION HAD PREVIOUSLY been an
ALTHOUGH, SOME 60 YEARS later, a
first attempt: the shape, scale length and control layout were bang-on. P-90 pickups and the Goldtop finish came as standard, with some examples featuring gold backs and sides. More problematic was the bridge/tailpiece, which the patent document shows was intended to be strung over the top. However, this was impossible due to the shallow neck pitch. Palm muting was out of the question, and Les wasn’t happy…
designed ‘wrapover’ stud bridge/tailpiece correct most of the ills of the previous trapeze arrangement, and when neck-pitch problems were addressed in early ’54, the result was one of the coolest Les Pauls of all. Intonation is, of course, something of a compromise with a wraparound bridge, but devotees swear something in the tone and sustain offered by this arrangement makes the struggle worthwhile.
issue, Mr McCarty once again had the answer in the form of the Tune-O-Matic bridge, a design that made its debut on the Les Paul Custom in 1954. The previous stud wrapover became the stri ng anchor – it had originally been intended for the strings to pass over the top, and some players, such as Joe Bonamassa, ‘top-wrap’ their guitars as such for a slinkier feel – and the new bridge offered precise intonation adjustment.
soapbar-loaded Les Paul still delivers many players’ idea of tonal heaven, when engineer Seth Lover found a way to buck single-coil hum in 1955, it wasn’t long before Gibson replaced the P-90 pickups on its Les Pauls with new PAF humbuckers. Although this enforced ‘upgrade’ wasn’t unanimously popular with players at the time, it’s hard to argue with the place that PAF-loaded PAF-loaded Les Pauls have carved in rock history.
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L E S PAU L STA N DA R D 195 8�1 960
L E S PAU L STA N DA R D 196 0�1 963
L E S PAU L STA N DA R D 196 8�1 969
L ES PAU L STA N DA R D 2015 2014� 2015
IN MID�’58, THE GOLDTOP finish and
DESPITE ITS HOLY GRAIL status
SOMEWHAT BAFFLINGLY, GIBSON RESPONDED
THE LES PAUL STANDARD has remained.
lightly toned back, sides and neck made way for Cherry Sunburst tops and red stain elsewhere. Previously, tops were made from three pieces of unmatched maple, hidden by gold paint, but the visible grain saw Gibson switch to book-matched, two-piece tops. Until early 1960, the highly UV-sensitive red dye used was prone to fading. Jumbo fretwire arrived midway through ’59 and the neck shape slimmed down by mid-1960.
amongst collectors, the ’58 to ’60 ’Burst wasn’t a roaring commercial success for Gibson, and late in 1960, there followed a radical switch to a design that’d later come to be known as the SG, with its thinner, all-mahogany body, pointed horns and easy upper-fret access. The model was renamed the SG Standard in late ’63, and though it seems unthinkable, for a period of time the Gibson Les Paul went out of production entirely.
to the demand for Les Pauls triggered by the likes of Clapton and Bloomfield with a new Standard that resembled a ’56 Goldtop rather than a ’Burst. Despite wider cutaway binding and other departures from 50s spec, these guitars still became desirable, though the arrival of ‘pancake’ body construction in early ’69 took them even further from the source. The model was soon re-christened the Les Paul Deluxe…
In late 2014, Gibson announced the 2015 Standard would feature G Force automatic tuning, a zero-fret adjustable nut and wider fingerboard dimensions, to name but a few changes that have set online forums alight. The changes proved less popular than hoped – and today Gibson offers both a Traditional range with an essentially classic spec as well as a separate High Performance line featuring next-gen G-Force tuners.
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HISTORY |LES
P A U L
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GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
1
2 3
PICKUPS pickups. Do the same on the low
The Tools Small paint or make-up
Keep them clean and gunge-free.
E string. You can go for a distance
Using a very soft brush, clean all
of 1.6mm (1/16”) (1/16”) on the treble side
the dust and gunk from pickup
and 3.2mm (1/8”) on the bass
brush or soft/medium
tops and around adjustment and
side. Unless you’re using a
toothbrush Various
mounting screws – a clean guitar
calibrated set, you may want to
small/medium cross-head
means a clean tone! Adjusting
screw the neck pickup further
or flat-blade screwdriver
the height of your pickups can
down into the guitar. Most
have a profound effect on what
’buckers are set with the screw
you hear through your amp. Fret
polepieces flat or lightly curved to
the high E at the top 21st or 22nd
match the fingerboard camber. If
fret and measure from the
a specific string is quiet/too loud,
underside of the string to the top
you can raise/lower the specific
of the E-string polepiece of both
polepiece to compensate.
Light oil (3-in-1)
Nut
lubricant, Vaseline or lip balm
1200-grit
wet-and-dry paper
Truss
rod Allen key or wrench
Metal ruler to measure string and pickup heights Fingerboard oil
Cloth/kitchen paper
0000-grade wire wool Masking tape
4
Digital
guitar tuner or app
Box
or ring spanner (approx.
5
13mm) Good-quality
guitar cleaner/polish
BRIDGE 6
Using a soft brush, clean all adjustment screws. A little 3-in-1 oil on screw threads will help with any future adjustments. Once you’ve cleaned the ’board, frets and nut, put on some new strings and check your intonation with a digital tuner. Step 1. Tune string. Step 2. Check note of string at the 12th fret compared with the harmonic: if the note is sharp, the bridge saddle needs to move backwards; if flat, it needs to move forwards. Repeat on all strings. Check the height of the strings above the 12th fret. A typical string height would be approx 1.6mm under the high E; 1.8mm to 2mm under the low E. Depending on the type of tune-o-matic bridge, raise or lower the bridge with either the thumb screws or the slot head posts. If you’re raising the string height, slacken off 7
the strings first. Strings set too low will rattle on the frets. Beyond these basic adjustments, if you have problems,
8
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head to a professional for a full setup.
H I S T O R Y | A
N A T O M Y
HARDWARE AND SETUP
A N A T O M Y Gibson has been making the Les Paul model in one style or another since 1952, and with regular maintenance they can give you decades of service. Here are the key points to check
2 1. MACHINEHEADS
5
7
so a little ext ra care here – and
gunk – an old credit card is perfect
(and can cause problems with
Machineheads, tuning machines,
lube – can help a lot. NB: Badly
to scrape off and clean this away.
future resprays and touch-ups),
tuners… Call ’em what you will,
cut nut grooves can hold the string
They like a ‘drink’ from time to
so it’s best to stick to a dedicated
the modern set should be trouble-
and lead to tuning problems. Press
time, especially in the winter
guitar polish for nitro finishes.
free. Les Pauls typically have
down on each string behind t he nut
months when guitars can suffer
Fender, Gibson and many others
enclosed types fully sealed with a
and if you hear a ‘ping’ it means
from centrally heated homes. Use
make great cleaners and polishes.
lifetime of grease packed inside.
the groove needs attention. Also,
dedicated fingerboard oil to bring 7. VOLUME
& TONE CONTROLS
Make sure the screw that holds the
if you’re upping your string gauge,
back the dark sheen of a healthy
button to the shaft is t ight. Simply
the grooves may need to be opened
rosewood fingerboard. Always use
Keep crackles and pops to a
tighten (never over-tighten!) with
out. Take it to a pro – this is all part
sparingly: apply a little fingerboard
minimum with a squirt or two
the correct cross- or flat-blade
of the setup procedure.
oil to a cloth or piece of kitchen
of contact cleaner directly into
paper and rub that into the ’bo ard.
the pots. Les Pauls are dream to
screwdriver. If you have the vintage ‘Kluson’-style tuners, then from
3. TRUSS
ROD
work on, because you can simply 5. FRETS
time to time a little 3-in-1 oil can
Keep an eye on the straightness of
remove the backplate to get to the
be dripped in from t he hole to help
your neck, especially in the winter
While you’re cleaning your ’bo ard,
lubricate the gears. Also, a little on
and summer months. If the action
give your frets a good polish w ith
two on the toggle switch can also
the shaft where it meets the bushing
gets uncomfortably high, then
some super-fine 0000-grade wire
help a lot.
on the face of the headstock can
your truss rod may need a little
wool, but make sure you use
help for a smooth tune.
tighten. Conversely, if your action
masking tape over your pickups
volume and tone pots. A squirt or
8. JACK
SOCKET
gets very low and rattly it may
to avoid getting wire wool strands
Make sure these are kept clean and
need slackening a little. Remember:
all over them and potentially
tight at all ti mes. To clean the jack
Whether these are cheaper plastic
lefty loosey, righty tighty! Make
damaging the pickup. It’s a goo d
socket, roll up a piece of wet-and-
or quality bone, t he nut’s grooves
adjustments in small quart-turn
idea to protect the pearloid inlays
dry paper into a small tube, then
benefit from a good clean with a
increments, but if you’re doubtful,
with masking tape, too, to avoid
insert it into the socket. You should
soft brush and a gentle lube using
or the rod resists turning, seek
scratching their surfaces.
a specialised nut grease. If that isn’t
professional help.
2. NUT
6. FINISH
available, a tiny dab of Vaseline or lip balm is just as effective. The D-
be able to twi st it gently around; this will clean off any gunge and
4. FINGERBOARD
oxidization and will help send your
Les Pauls are invariably finished
tone cleanly to the amp. A little
and G-string nut slots on Les Pauls
Rosewood fingerboards have no
with nitrocellulose. This can be
contact cleaner, such as Servisol or
are often prone to string binding,
finish, so first, clean off any visible
quite sensitive to modern polishes
Deoxit, will do wonders here, too.
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GIBSON LES PAUL HANDBOOK
L E S PA U L
1
ERIC CLAPTON HIDEAWAY
John Mayall’s Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton, 1969 1960 LES PAUL STANDARD bluesA WATERSHED MOMENT FOR bluesrock, Clapton’s Clapton’s playing on his h is first post-Yardbirds record (aka the ‘Beano album’) is a landmark for tone, too. The guitarist bought what’s
generally believed to be a 1960 Les Paul Standard ©
D E Z O H O F F M A N N / R E X S H U T T E R S T O C K
from a shop in London; later stolen during his early Cream days. Clapton’s quest for sustain also led him to a Series II 1962 Marshall JTM 45 ‘Bluesbreaker’ combo, rolling back the guitar’s volume volume to to effective effectively ly contro controll the over overdrive drive on this stunning version of the Freddie King classic.
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PETER GREEN | FLEETWOOD MAC OH WELL
Single, 1969
1959 GIBSON LES PAUL THE LES PAUL STANDARD has remained in
production since the mid-1970s and has also undergone numerous reinventions over the years – some in the name of authenticity, others all because of innovation. In late 2004, Gibson announced that the 2015 Standard would now be featuri ng G Force automatic tuning, a zero-fret adjustable nut and wider fingerboard dimensions, to name but a few of the sweeping changes that would go on to set the internet forums alight…
HISTORY |LES PAUL TONES
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STEVE JONES | SEX PISTOLS GOD SAVE THE QUEEN
Never Mind The Bollocks… 1979
1974 LES PAUL CUSTOM
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PAUL KOSSOFF | FREE ALL RIGHT NOW
Fire And Water, 1970
JIMMY PAGE | LED ZEPPELIN WHOLE LOTTA LOVE
Led Zeppelin II, 1969
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GARY MOORE | THIN LIZZY STILL IN LOVE WITH YOU
Nightlife, 1974
1959 GIBSON LES PAUL
1959 LES PAUL STANDARD
1959 LES PAUL STANDARD
KOSSOFF’S CLASSIC TONE WAS fuelled by his love of 1950s 1950s and early 60s Gibson ’Bursts, with high action and heavy strings. But the riff and solo on Free’s best-known song may not have been played through his usua l Marshall; in fact, it’s rumoured that Kossoff actually used a 50-watt Selmer Treble ’N’ Bass amp on the track in stead.
PAGE RECORDED ZEPPELIN’S DEBUT with a Telecaster, but for the follow-up, he’d bought Joe Walsh’s ’59 ’Burst. The metallic descending riff tone here is the result of distant mic’ing of a Marshall Plexi from Page to fatten the sound of a cranked amp, while a depressed wah is used on the solo for that raucous tone.
THE SECOND APPEARANCE IN this list for
Pistols’ classic punk record was recorded through a Fender Twin with Gauss speakers (allegedly stolen from Bob Marley’s band) that enhanced mids over the trebles, with two Les Pauls; a black 1954 Les Paul Custom and his more famous white 1974 model.
Greeny, after Peter Green sold it to young protégée Moore. This classy Lynott slow blues saw him run it through an original UniVibe and 100-watt 100-watt H&H amplifier singing sweetly, the neck pickup just pushing the amp’s front end into natural overdrive. Simple and fabulous!
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JONES’ RECOLLECTION IS THAT the Sex
GEORGE HARRISON | THE BEATLES SOMETHING
Abbey Road, 1969
1957 LES PAUL STANDARD
BERNARD BUTLER | SUEDE ANIMAL NITRATE
Suede, 1993
TOM SCHOLZ | BOSTON MORE THAN A FEELING
Boston, 1976
1980 HERITAGE LES PAUL
1968 LES PAUL GOLDTOP
KEITH RICHARDS (I CAN’T GET NO) SATISFACTION
Out Of Our Heads, 1965
1959 LES PAUL STANDARD
GEORGE ENDED UP RE�RECORDING his
BUTLER WAS INSPIRED BY hearing
SCHOLZ HAS ALWAYS BEEN loyal to his
AFTER BUYING IT AT London’s
finest break on his greatest song, just to change the tone. He replaced his earlier solo using ‘Lucy’, a Goldtop refinished in Cherry and previously owned by friend Clapton, and then John Sebastian and Rick Derringer before him. Harr ison played the famous solo through an unspecified Fender amp.
Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit to write Suede’s enduring, guitar-riff-led anthem, but the marriage on this song is a surprisingly jangly overdrive tone for a Les Paul, but layering with a Rickenbacker 12-string and an ES-355 through the amp choice of a Vox AC30 with a flanger certainly aided that.
two ’68 Goldtops with the P-90s swapped for humbuckers, but his perfectionist approach to technology and wall of sound on Boston’s debut was forward thinking. He used a cranked V Marshall Plexi 1 head fed into a prototype of his own design Power Soak attenuator and stacked layering.
Selmer’s music store in 1964, Richards wasn’t sure about putting his Bigbsy-fitted LP through a Gibson Maestro Fuzz-Tone Fuzz-Tone pedal for the opening riff of the final Satisfaction recording, and wanted horns. But his bandmates convince d him and the sound became a milestone in early fuzz use.
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GOLDTOPS Gibson’s first Les Pa uls were clad in an opule opulent nt gold gold finish that gave t he guitar a lustr lustrous ous elegance that remains iconic today. The golden years began with the model’s launch in 1952 952,, after a fter which it underwent many changes as it evolved evolved towards to wards the classic Les Paul spe cification, featuring twin PAF humbuckers and a Tune-o-Matic tailpiece, by 1957
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GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
1952 GIBSON LES PAUL The first incarnation of the visionary guitar that bore Les Paul’s name had many short-lived, early features
his historic Goldtop belongs to the Guitars – The Museum collection in Sweden. It hails from 1952 – the year of its release – and is in such spectacular condition it could have rolled out of Nashville last year, let alone Kalamazoo over 60 years ago. Back then, Les Paul was the best-known guitarist in the USA, and marketing wisdom dictated that adding his signature to the headstock would ensure sales to budding pickers everywhere. And yet, the t win-P-90 model – Gibson’s first solidbody – met with a lukewarm reception, primarily due to the original t rapeze tailpiece with strings running beneath the stopbar, stopbar, making palm muting of strings more difficult. It was subsequently revised to a stud tailpiece in late 1953. Beneath the gold finish of the ’52 was a three-piece maple top over a mahogany body, with set mahogany neck. Some scarce examples featured gold-finished back and sides, too. While it is not t he definitive ’Paul, for most players the ’52 still deserves recognition as the forefather of a long line of classic solidbodies.
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GOLDTOPS |
1953 GIBSON LES PAUL A pivotal development on the ’53 Les Paul proved a godsend for guitarists
he introduction of the stopbar bridge bridge on on Les Les Pauls Pauls in 1953 1953 brought brought the guitar guitar much much closer closer to the format of the modern Les Paul. This bridge replaced the flimsy a nd much-reviled much-reviled trapeze tailpiece on the ’52 Les Paul, which was partially developed by Les Paul him self. Gibson chief Ted McCarty McCarty recognised the need for a more pragmatic and ergonomic solution. The result was the wraparound stopbar bridge, screwed directly into the top of the g uitar, which increased sustain and allowed al lowed the player to palm-mute the strings. This was the only significant change on the ’53 Les Paul, which, like the ’52 model, featured two single-coil P90 pickups, trapezoid inlays, Kluson deluxe tuners, four control knobs, three-way pickup selector, white pickguard and bound bound fingerb fingerboard. oard. Noted players of ’53 Les Pauls include Neil Young, Young, whose main g uitar ‘Old Black’ is a ’53 Goldtop, painted black, with a mini-humbucker from a Firebird in the bridge bridge positi position on and a Bigsb Bigsby y tailpiec tailpiece. e. Old Black’s raunchy, searing tones can be heard on tracks such as Cinnamon Girl The River River.. and Down and Down By The
T
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G I B S O N
L E S
P A U L
GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
1956
GIBSO N LES PAUL GOLDTOP
1959
FENDER CHAMP We visited the guitar vaults of Phil Hylander and Michael Ross – the founders of the London L ondon show show Seven Decades – to discover di scover a couple of vintage vi ntage wonders… ith guitar in hand, Michael Ross says, “This one’s a ’56 and when we first did a Wilton’s [the original venue for Seven Decades in London] show, show, we borrowed a friend’s ’55. I really enjoyed that guitar… So we needed a Goldtop – but there was no point buying a ’52 with the trapeze bridge on it, unless you’re gonna convert it. They’re not good guitars, the ’52s, in my view. It’s funny, because people think , ‘Wow, first-year first-year Goldtop, they’re a bargain.’ And yeah, they’re £15,000 less than one of these. But they’re completely different guitars. “We got this from a friend who told us it was possibly for sale. It has had a refret, – although it’s gonna need new tuners at some point. We can usually repair them, but it’s delicate up there. It sounds great, and the P-90s are awesome. We play Guitar Slim stuff on that, because he was an early Goldtop player and had a little tweed, and Rosetta Tharpe who played a Goldtop and, of course, Freddie King. “The amp’s a ’59 Champ and we’ve even got the original card box it was shipped in.”
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W o r d s J a m i e D i c k s o n P h o t o g r a p h y J o s e p h B r a n s t o n
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1. The
Seven Decades
collection is so exacting that sometimes, as in the case of this ’ 59 Fender Champ, the original packaging is still intact
2. This
P-90-equipped
’56 Goldtop is used in the shows for tracks from Rosetta Tharpe, Guitar Slim and Freddie King. The amp is a ‘59 Fender Champ
GOLDTOPS |
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D R E A M
R I G S
GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
1195 95 7 GIBSON LES PAUL The introduction of the 1957 Les Paul broadened the sonic palette for future generations of guitarists
f one feature set the ’57 Les Paul apart and heralded a profound shift across the industry, it was the Seth Lover-designed humbucker humbucker pickups, which replaced the P-90 pickups on the Les Paul. Designed in 1955 (US patent 2,896,491), the ‘Patent Applied For’ or ‘PAF’ humbuckers of 1957 became the flagship pickup design most associated with Gibson, and one that helped elevate the Les Paul to the status of all-time icon. By connecting two pickup coils in series and out-of-phase, Lover and Gibson set out to remedy the common 60-cycle hum of conventional pickups. This innovation also produced a beefier new tone that would be embraced by legions of blues and rock players for decades to come. Other guitar companies soon followed suit, outfitting their electrics with versions of the humbucking pickup. Noted ’57 goldtop players include Duane Allman, who played a stunning 1957 Les Paul goldtop for the first 18 months of his t wo-and-a-half wo-and-a-half years in The Allman Brothers Band and on numerous sessions sessions with other a rtists, including Derek and the Dominos’ 1970 a And And Other Other Assorted Assorted masterpiece, Layl masterpiece, Layla Love Songs. Songs.
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ISSUE TW O OU T NOW
% 100 BLUES The New Blues Quarterly FROM T HE MAK ERS OF
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SUNBURSTS Responding to the success of Fender’s Stratocaster, Gibson upped the a nt nte e in 1958 by giving the Les Pau l a new look.. At first, the vivid cherry sun burst finish that graced look the maple tops of its late 1958 models met with only lukewarm sales. But, despite this faltering start, nearly 1,500 were made between 1958 and 1960, acquiring the Les Paul Standard moniker along the way. These were later to become the most sought-after vintage electric guitars of all time, known simply as ‘Bursts...
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GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
BORN AGAIN It’s hard to imagine, but back in the late 50s, the fabled Les Paul Standard wasn’t a hit and soon disappeared from Gibson’s catalogue. We find out how it took more than 20 years for Gibson to get the magic formula right
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and American blues guitarists by the mid-60s, however. When Eric Clapton was pictured on the back of the Bluesbreakers’ electrifying ‘Beano’ album of 1966, the trickle of interest in old Standards became a levee-breaking flood, while other a scendant guitar heroes such as Jeff Beck, Peter Green and Keith Richards all acquired ’Bursts, too. By 1967, the reversal of fortune was complete: Gibson’s flagship solidbody, the SG, was selling poorly – but guita rists were frantic to lay their hands on the old ’Bursts and Customs that had been discontinued d iscontinued due to lack of interest just a few years before. As Gibson historian and Guitarist contributor Tony Bacon recounts in The Les Paul Guitar Book, one anxious British reader of Beat Beat Instrume Instrumenta ntall magazine complained of “having great difficulty in obtaining a Les Paul Custom guitar”, and implored other musicians to help him lay his hands on one.
hen the first version of the Les Paul was launched in 1952, its bullion-g bullion-gold old finish, arched arched top top and glued-in neck signalled to the upstarts at Fender that while they might be content to bolt Telecaster necks to slab bodies, Gibson did things with a little more sophistication. But by 1958, the game had moved on: the Stratocaster had rocketed into the heavens of guitar design in ’54. Four years on, Fender’s new Jazzmaster was was fully in tune t une with a jet age dominated by chrome, switches and slender, contoured design. By contrast, the Les Paul seemed closer to the bulky, traditional archtops of the 40s – and sales were flagging. In an effort to freshen things up, Gibson replaced the goldtop finish with a Fender-like sunburst, dubbing it the Les Paul Standard and tweaking its spec (see p38). But few famous players, in that pre-distortion era, adopted the ’Burst, and in ’61 Gibson changed the body shape to the outline we recognise today as the SG, and that iconic maple-top, maple-top, mahogany single-cut vanished from the company’s catalogue altogether – along with Les Paul’s personal endorsement. There was a saving grace, however. Les Paul, with his buttermilk-smooth jazz licks, probably didn’t intend it, but if you plugged one of those old ’Bursts into a fully cranked valve amp its honeyed honeyed growl was sensation sensational. al. It was a point not lost on emerging British
LES IS MORE Despite this upsurge in interest in 50s Les Pauls, Gibson was struggling with solidbody electric guitars. The company’s company’s market share was crumbling and it had lost faith in the SG. But Les Paul, who had withdrawn his name from the redesigned SG/Les Paul solidbody of ’61, now returned at the hour of need. He had put a divorce behind him and his business business interests interests were were clear clear of legal entanglements. entanglements. He contacted Maurice
W o r d s J a m i e D i c k s o n P h o t o g r a p h y P h i l i p S o w e l s
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SUNBURSTS |
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H I S T O R Y
GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
Berlin, president of Gibson’s parent company CMI, in 1967 and persuaded him that reissues of the original single-cuts bearing his name would sell. By the time Stan Rendell was appointed president of Gibson the following year, with a mandate to lead the company out of its mire of production problems and poor sales, the decision had already been taken to reissue a P-90 Goldtop and a black, twin-humbucker Les Paul Custom. There was to be no super-accurate ’Burst reissue, however, however, leaving enthusiasts disappointed for the moment. Despite that, the Goldtop and Custom reissues – launched at NAMM in June 1968 – proved an immediate hit. But just as prospects brightened, CMI merged with a brewing company, ECL, to form Norlin Industries in ’69. The change of ownership brought with it a new style of management focused on efficiency rather than period-correct luthiery. Thus costeffective but compromised guitars, such as the Les Paul Deluxe of 1969, prevailed. It was offered in a sunburst finish – the first deliberate nod to the growing interest in ’Bursts – but fitted with mini-humbuckers. mini-humbuckers. These slotted into the P-90 pickup cavities of the Goldtop reissue it replaced, meaning no expensive new tooling was required: plus Gibson could use up a surplus stock of Epiphone pickups. The bean-counters were pleased, players less so. Worse, as Norlin squeezed the business harder as the 1970s unfolded, quality dropped. But then an unexpected chink of light appeared.
When Clapton was pictured on the back of the Bluesb Bluesbreak reakers ers’’ ‘Bea ‘Beano no’’ albu album m of of 1966, the trickle trickle of interest in old Standards became a flood
make a ‘real’ Les Paul Standard. The result was the Heritage Series: with a three-piece mahogany neck and a top carve modelled on an early 50s ’Paul, the Standard 80 and Standard 80 Elite gu itars were Gibson’s Gibson’s best effort yet to revive the spirit of ’59. These special-order guitars set a precedent for increasingly accurate reissues to follow, including the 1983 and 1984 Standard Reissues – and this renaissance of interest in ’Bursts was buoyed further with hot new players such as Slash – although, ironically, he favoured a replica built by Kris Derrig. Things improved furt further her when Norlin decided the musical instrument instr ument companies in its portfolio, including Gibson, had to go – and they sold the company to Henry Juszkiewicz, Juszkiewicz, David Berryman and Gary Zebrowski in 1986. A shake-up of Gibson’s management followed, followed, as the company began to haul haul itself itself into into profi profitabil tability ity with with a renewed focus on its heritage. Further research resulted in the reintroduction of period-correct details such as a 50s-spec neck tenon – while showpieces, such as the ’59 Flametop of 1993, upped the ‘wow’ factor considerably. The final big step in the evolution of the ’Burst reissue was to follow shortly after, in the form of artificial ageing, which saw aged parts and finish applied to guitars such as the Custom Shop’s Standard ’59 Aged model of 1999. The ageing process, currently known as VOS or Vintage Original Spec, also proved useful for replicas of famous ’Bursts, starting with the 2002 replica of Gary Rossington’s ’59 Standard nicknamed ‘Bernice’. This has grown into a range of guita rs closely modelled on those owned by top players, including wear-marks wear-marks from life t he road. Ironically, Ironically, a process that began with indifference to Gibson’s sunburst Standard back back in the 50s 50s has has spawn spawned ed a branch branch of luthiery devoted to making maki ng ’em just like they used to.
REALER DEALER
Norlin executives may not have been vintage guitar enthusiasts, but lots of Gibson dealers were, and many remembered how glorious the late 50s ’Bursts had been. With no prospect of Gibson making a full-production reissue, some commissioned commissioned limited runs of Les Paul ‘Standards’, built to a decently period-correct spec. Gibson realised there was a market for such instruments, but was hesitant to go down the route of full historical accuracy. The Les Paul Standard of 1976 had a ’Burst top and f ull-size humbuckers, humbuckers, but also sported glaring glari ng anachronisms such as maple neck construction and a ‘pancake’ body made by gluing two shallow slabs of mahogany together, one one on top of the other with a t hin sheet of maple in between. A change change had to come come,, howe however ver.. At At the start of the 80s, Gibson’s R&D team began to ask in earnest what they needed to do to
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37
H I S T O R Y
GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
A reissue is as close as most of us will ever get to an authentic ’59, but would you be
6
able to tell a real one from an expert copy? When we wanted the lowdown on ’59 Les Pauls, we contacted a luthier who has specialised in repairing ’Bursts for over over 30 years. He’s well know to ’59 aficionados, and
5
now gets so many requests for repairs on sought-after Gibsons, he asked we only name
4
him by his online trading name ‘Over The Pond Guy’ (OTPG). Here’s his perspective on the hallmarks of the real thing…
1. FINGERBOARD
2. PICKUP RINGS
“The fingerboards of ’59 Les Pauls
“These were made from cellulose
were made of rosewood from
acetate butyrate, common
Brazil – but that term covers a
known as CAB. And they were
variety of [sub-types] of rosewood.
injection-moulded by a company
From early ’59, when they started
called Hughes Industries Plastics.
to use jumbo fretwire, you start to
There appear to be three batches
see Rio rosewood used for the
of the cream surrounds, all
fingerboards – but also black
slightly different colours. The first
cocobolo and Amazon rosewood.
batch doesn’t have the damage
The inlays were made out of
to one of the legs [screw bosses]
celluloid nitrate.”
underneath – but after that, the
1
3
2
mould was damaged: it was already a weak point, because it had been repaired. These surrounds were taller than any of the later ones – except recent reissues. reissues. That’s because the craftsmen making them in ’59 had tighter tolerances in terms of how the neck was fitted and elevation – it was intended that the pickups should be level with the tops of the rings when they were adjusted.”
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SUNBURSTS |
H I S T O R Y
The Body “The top was generally made from eastern American maple: either red maple or silver maple. There’s a lot of variation in the carve of the top. They started off using the top-carve machines that Gibson still has in the Custom Shop. These were used for L-5s, Super 400s and so on. But 4. FRETWIRE
the Les Paul caught on, and they needed a dedicated machine to keep up.
“On all but the very earliest ’59
“So they made a machine that was a copy-router
Les Pauls, Gibson used Jumbo wire that was 2.4mm wide and
resembling a record player – there were several tiers on
1.1mm high before any dressing:
this ‘record player’, each with routers on, and at the bottom
it was an 18 per cent nickel silver
was a sample, over which a stylus ran [tracing the contours
Half-Hard wire. In 1960, they
of the sample to guide the routers above]. The shape of the carve changed over time – because the sample was only
moved to a larger wire that was 2.54mm wide.”
made of wood, having the stylus running over it constantly meant it wore down. But the [centre] thickness of the top remains between 14 and 14.5mm. Likewise, the edge thickness of the top is [usually] 2mm thicker where the neck is fitted, compared to the end where the end-pin is – although the bindi ng generally hides tha t.” “The outline templates [used to cut body shape] also wore down – meaning ’59s are smaller than ’52s. The mahogany of the body is mostly of American origin, but I don’t think Gibson was too fussy, as I’ve also found
3. PICKUPS
5. NECK PROFILE
“The pickups vary incredibly. In
“The neck profile of a genuine
“After routing, the bodies went to the slack-belt sander,
1959, Alnico II, IV and V magnets
’59 is generally much smaller
which is an extra-wide sanding belt. The operators took a
were common, often with different
than the vintage reissues – it’s
shaped wooden paddle and pushed the sanding belt onto
combinations in the same guitar!
a misconception that all vintage
The Alnico V, up till 1964, was
guitars had huge necks. Like
[tool] marks had been sanded away. For evidence, look
isotropic, meaning it can be
the bodies, they were finished
at the uneven binding thickness on an original 50s guitar:
charged in any direction, but in
by hand on sanders, by
on fakes, the binding tends to be even all the way round.
1964, Alcamax, also known as
skilled workers.”
African woods in mid-to-late 50s Gibsons.
the top – continuously checking and sanding until all the
But on originals, the binding varies by up to 2mm on
anisotropic Alnico V, became the
the same instrument – the binding was put on before
industry standard: it’s cast in a
they were sanded.”
magnetic field, and can only be charged in one plane. They were wound with plain enamel wire
Capacitors
– that’s copp er wire wit h enamel
“Mostly they used Sprague
insulation made of linseed oil.
Black Beauty capacitors:
“People sometimes think that
0.022mf, 400V. Although
Gibson only had the two Leesona
they also used Astron
102 winding machines that
6. RADIUS
capacitors of the same
Seymour Duncan now owns, but
“They fingerboards of ’59 Les Pauls
value and, occasionally,
they actually had up to 40 others.
were machined to a 10-inch
what are now referred to
On some, the counters didn’t work
radius – and then sanded
as Sprague ‘Telephone
afterwards by hand. So what
Book’ capacitors: waxed
either wind them until the
you tend to get is you still get a
capacitors, and Black
bobbins were full or time them for
10-inch radius at the edges but
Beauty caps are oil-filled.”
three minutes, say, and then take
it’s flatter in the middle, which
– and what they use d to do was
them off – which is a very
actually makes it very
haphazard method. They didn’t
comfortable to play.”
use intentionally different winds on neck and bridge pickups, though, because all of the bobbins were just wound, put in boxes and used at random.”
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GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
THE FIRST ’BURST A very special guitar turned up in i n Nashville a while back – a 1958 Les Paul Paul Standard prototype that is the earliest surviving example of the ’Burst. We talk to Walter Carter about how it lay undiscovered for over 50 years
H
Sunburst Les Paul from the classic period. But what about the unusual three-piece t hree-piece maple top that was more typical of the way the earlier Goldtop models were built? And the low serial number? How did those fit in? As Walter Walter investigate investigated d the the guitar more more fully, fully, he realised he was looking at the earliest ‘true’ ’Burst t hat had yet come to light – and what’s more, the full story of its life, from purchase to the present day was known. As this extraordinary extraordinary guitar goes on sale as a ‘used’ instrument for the first time, we explore its story in greater depth w ith Walter Carter and find out how a maverick product demonstrator from Gibson caught the imagination of a 14-year-old boy who then took delivery of a very nice Christmas present, indeed…
istory doesn’t always provide clear-cut beginnings and endings, especially when it comes to vintage Gibsons, yet dedicated historians of the Les Paul have long pored over books and other historical historical sources sources to try and identify the first examples of landmark models. Often more akin to a process of evolution, design updates to the famous single-cut often sputtered into being after one-off experimental guitars were built, trialled, rejected and reconfigured until finally a winning formula emerged. Thus the 1952 Goldtop Goldtop with the unwieldy trapeze tailpiece gave way first to stop-bar and then Tune-o-matic equipped versions, just as P-90s had given way to PAF humbuckers in 1957. By 1958, cherry-stain finishes were being being trialled trialled as a possibl possible e repla replacem cement ent to the bullion gold hue of earlier incarnations. Just occasionally occasionally a guitar gu itar comes to light that captures these moments moments of transition and can be identified as the first of its kind – such as the 1958 Les Paul Standard that arrived out of the blue at the door of Carter Vintage Vintage Guitars Guitars in Nashvill Nashville. e. Its Its owner owner,, who who remains anonymous at the time of writing, was given it as a Christmas gift in 1958, and had been its sole user for over half a century. He contacted the store to see what it might be worth. As propri proprietor etor Walter Walter Carter explains, the owner already knew it was valuable valuable merely merely by dint of it being being a Cherry Cherry
How did the guitar come to light?
“Well, I knew th is serial number from when I was Gibson’s historian. I’d done some research, looking for another cherry-top guitar from early ’58. And there was an entry in the ledgers on 28 May 1958. It had these two serial numbers and, at the time, I d idn’t know of either of these guitars. “Not too long after that, the [English version version of] The Beauty Of The ’Burst book was published [Yasuhiko Iwanade, Hal Leonard] and the first guitar in that book was number 8 3096, which was Slash’s guitar. And then the other ot her number in that
W o r d s J a m i e D i c k s o n P h o t o g r a p h y J o n a t h a n R o n c o l a t o
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1 9 5 8
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D R A D N A T S L U A P S E L 8 5 9 1
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GIBSON LES PAUL
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“This one that we have now is, in my opinion, just the next experiment. And And it’s it’s the one one that that stuc stuck” k” WALTER CARTER
entry was 8 3087. And that was 20 years ago. But until now, this other guitar, g uitar, 8 3087, hadn’t turned up. “Then, out of the blue, a guy emailed and said, ‘Maybe you can tell me more about this guitar,’ and he sent pictures and the serial number rang a bell. I iimmediately mmediately called up what I knew about it previously, and within a couple of weeks we had it here in the shop and were able to go through it.” What features mark this particular guitar out as the first of its kind and differ from what the ’Burst became?
“It’s an unusual guitar with a three-piece top and the owner had made a couple of changes to it. The jackplate and the switch washer and one tuner – but other than that, it ’s original. It’s odd that this guitar has t hat three-piece top. But it’s the guitar that was shipped out with the one Slash owns now. “I think Gibson was still experimenting. They’d decided to change the finish in 1958 [from Goldtop to Sunburst]. I don’t know that Gibson’s decisions always take place at the start of the year, but typically that ’s the time I’d start thinking about a new model to debut, say at a NAMM show, or at a trade show that’s gonna be in the spring. So, looking through the record books, there are several previous references and some of them say ‘cherry finish’ and there’s t here’s one that actually says ‘Cherry Sunburst’. “I’m familiar with three of those and one of them does have a uniform cherry top. That guitar has ha s surfaced and is known now. There’s one that I don’t believe is known, but I’ve actually seen it. A And nd it has a top and back that is actually like the red mahogany finishes – what they call a shaded red mahogany – on Gibson f-style mandolins of the ’teens. It looks just like the finish on a
1918 mandolin. It was kind of a cherry shade all over, light in the middle and cherry on the outside, and the back was darker. The back was the same way and the back of the neck also. It has the same kind ki nd of shading. “And there was yet another… I’ve only seen bad pictures of it. It’s described in t he books as ‘Cherry ‘Cherry Sunburst’ Sunburst’,, but but it looks as if if it it was sprayed with cherry over the whole thing – like maybe t hey sprayed cherry cherry over traditional yellow to black sunburst. It’s da rk at the edges and then that’s that ’s faded. So, you see cherry that appears to have sunken down into the woodgrain at the top. The consensus consensus on that one is t hat it was over-sprayed entirely with cherry. And, in fact, the serial number looks like it has cherry stain over it. So, those are previous ones. “The centre piece piece of this g uitar’s top is quite well flamed and I’m sure as I can be with anything anyth ing related to Gibson Gibson that they were still in an experimental stage and they just grabbed grabbed a guitar that was intended intended to be be a Goldtop, and had no idea that would be the one they would stick with as far as the new finish goes. I believe the guitar that is now owned by Slash has a slight offset seam. I cannot tell from the pictures I’ve seen, but I believe that it is slightly offset, which many, if not all, of the Goldtops are.” Where does this one fit in?
1. The
guitar was a Christmas
present, purchased from OK Houck Music Store in Memphis, Tennessee
2. The
guitar’s serial
number, 8 3087, piqued Walter’s curiosity – as he remembered it from his days working as Gibson’s historian
3. Vintage
guitar experts
Christie and Walter Carter cradle the ’58 ’Burst outside of Carter Vintage Guitars in Nashville, Tennessee
42
“This one that we have now is, in my opinion, just the next next experimen experiment. t. And it’s the one that stuck. These two guitars were sent to CMI – Chicago Musical Instrument Company – which was Gibson’s parent company, presumably for approval, and obviously this is the finish they decided to go with. They shipped it out to a dealer, which was the OK Houck Music Store in Memphis – it was the store where Elvis and Scotty Moore bought their instruments. The current owner was a 14-year-old kid and his father took him in there and he was picking out a guitar that was gonna be a Christmas present. There was a Gibson representative there doing a demonstration on two new Gibson models, models, and this was wa s one of them and he remembers the demonstrator’s name, which was Andy Nelson. “He’s getting better k known nown now. now. He was sort of a fly in the ointment for Gibson’s management back in those days, but he was responsible responsible for the L-5CT George Gobel guitar, and he was also responsible responsible for the Epiphone Excellente and the Gibson Crest. But his main job was as a clinician and product demonstrator. He was there playing
SUNBURSTS |1958
1
L E S
PA U L
S T A N D A R D
2 3
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GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
this guitar guita r and that’s what this kid decided he he wanted. He bought it and in April of ’59 and he had a snapshot of himself taken with it; it clearly shows the three-piece top and the woodgrain matches up. “He’s 70 years old now now and he kept the guitar guita r all that time. He really had no idea… I mean, he knew that he had a Sunburst Les Paul, which he thought t hought had some value, but had no idea that it might be the the first first with with this finish.” finish.” And have any modifications been made to it over the years?
“The owner had broken the jackplate a couple of times and so he had fashioned another one out of some thicker plastic. He changed the jack out when he did that to a new jack, and he said he a lso broke the switch washer trying to make ma ke fast pickup switches, and he got his hand or pick caught up in that. So, that’s been replaced. One of the tuner shafts got bent as well, but that was in 1963 and the place he took it still had 50s tuners around and so the replacement tuner is correct. The button on it didn’t age like the others, so it sticks out like a sore thumb – but it is, in fact, a period-correct tuner.” What’s it like to play?
“It’s an absolutely wonderful wonderful guitar. g uitar. It’s not the baseball bat neck you traditionall traditionally y associa associate te with with a ’58. It’s It’s a little bit thinner. thinner. The feel and the sound sound is just just everything you would expect from a classic Sunburst. The phrase that I keep trying to [use] with this is, ‘the ’Burst as we know it today’. It’s certainly not generically the first Gibson with a Sunburst finish of some sort. But if you could distinguish between ‘Sunburst’ and ‘’Burst’ – well, this is what people would characterise as a ’Burst.”
1
And if we dropped by o n a Saturday morning and asked to try it…
“Well, it’s here in the store – we’ve shown it not to every bloke bloke who walks in, but but to a lot of people. people. I’m not sure we’ll put it on the website, but the price will get out. It’s $625,000. Which is basically a median…We polled a lot of other dealers and people who who buy and sell these things. Not necessarily formally dealers, but that’s kind of a median opinion of the value, so I don’t think it’s a gauging kind of price. Some people thought it should be much higher, but, at first, some people are taken aback by the three-piece top, so those people would price it lower. But it’s the first of its kind. And, let me reiterate – it is a g reat guitar on its own merits.” www.cartervintage.com
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SUNBURSTS |1958
L E S
1. The
PA U L
S T A N D A R D
owner has made some
modifications over the years, such as updating a broken jackplate and tuner
2. The
’58 ’Burst’s original (and
anonymous) owner pictured here with the guitar in 1960
3. This
particular ’Burst is said to be the
first of its kind and is valued in excess of £400,000
3
·
“It’s an absolutely “It’s wonderful guitar. The feel and the sound is just everything you would expect from a classic Sunburst” ·
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GIBSON LES PAUL
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1
2
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SUNBURSTS |DREAM
R I G S
1958
GIBSON LES PAUL STANDARD
1958
FENDER SUPER We revisit Michael Ross and Phil Hylander of London Show Seven Decades to discover how their hunt for that one special Sunburst saw them embark on a voyage of discovery ichael and Phil don’t walk into their purchases lightly. Phil says, “We bought this ’Burst about t wo years ago. We wanted to give ourselves enough time to find a particular kind of ’58. “Before we bought this, we borrowed two ’Burs ts for the show. So we’d played some before and we knew we had to get one,” he continues. “It’s a massive purchase, but we became friendly with [vintage guitar expert] Drew Berlin. “His first question was, ‘What sort of ’Burst are you after? Do you want it in a certain condition – or can anything be changed? But, for us, it came back to the same thing: we needed a ’Burst we wouldn’t be afraid to go out and use and play. But it also had to be 100 per cent clean [original]. And we were keen on a ’58.” “When we played it, we hooked it up to a little tweed amp,” says Michael. “And it was like, ‘Yeah, this is really good.’ It’s got a mellow vibe to it. It’s a good weight and it still has the original buttons on the tuners. They crumble away over ti me on a lot of ’Bursts, so it’s unusual to have them in working, original condition.”
M
1. This
’58 ’Burst came
to the Seven Decades collection after much careful – and patient – searching
2. The
Fender Super:
“You can just put anything into that amp and the guitar comes alive”
W o r d s J a m i e D i c k s o n P h o t o g r a p h y J o s e p h B r a n s t o n
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H A N D B O O K
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K EE F ’BURST Some guitars can become more famous than their owners, but when the owner was once Keith Richards, that’s a tall order.
Guitarist
discovers how his first 1959 Les Paul is still causing controversy some 45-plus years after he last strummed it Words Dave Burrluck Photography J o b y S e s s i o n s
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H A N D B O O K
K
eith Richards may not be renowned for the liquid blues improvisations that so many Les Paul players players can boast, but he was – unquestiona unquestionably bly – the first Brit rock star sta r to embrace the then-discontinued t hen-discontinued Gibson solidbody. Richards-plus-’Burst was first seen on the second Stones USA tour in 1964, and more Les Pauls were added to Richards’ arsenal during the decade only to be replaced with Telecasters during the 1970s. Dave Brewis of Rock Stars Guitars, which specialises in the sale of artist-owned instruments, believes the pictured Les Paul (serial no 93182) to be very definitely Keith’s original. In the early 2000s, vintage restorer Clive Brown had called Brewis when he had the guitar gu itar in for some work. “I’d been looking for it for a good few years,” remembers Brewis. “I’d looked at so many shots of the Stones to know just from the grain that it was Keith’s original Les Paul. “It’s been very difficult to get any info from the Stones themselves,” continues Brewis, but through fans, enthusiasts and ‘Les Paul people’ he’s managed to piece together at least some, if not all, of its story. “I understand – via a second-hand story from Andrew Loog Oldham – that they’d got the guitar on their first visit to the States (in 1964). There’s There’s a flurry of activit y with the guitar being used by Keith from that point on – The Ed Sullivan Show and every American show on that small small [secon [second] d] USA USA Ready Steady Steady Go in the UK, Top tour, then Ready Of The Pops and so on. It runs for about 18 months to two years when the guitar is quite heavily used. There’s also a picture in Andrew Loog Oldhams’s Oldhams’s book book of of the Satisfaction on in Los Angeles recording of Satisfacti [May, [May, 1965] and it looks like Keith is playing that guitar. g uitar. It then get s rather more cloudy.” cloudy.” GUITAR LEADS
Brewis has other leads to go on: “There’s a picture of Eric Clapton Clapton at the 1966 1966 Richmond Jazz And Blues festival playing what looks like the exact same guitar. But from the enquiries I’ve made, I don’t think Eric specifically remembers that guita r. It’s obviously one with a Bigsby. Later, Later, there’s a picture of Mick Taylor playing what again seems to be that guitar. I’d heard a theory that maybe Keith traded it to Eric and then Eric traded back to Mick Taylor and the Stones. But I don’t know.” Richards is clearly playing a ’Burst-withBigsby on the 1969 tour but, “I thin k by then
“I think it could well become the first million-dollar Les Paul Paul because because of its history. Actually, I think think it could could already be there” DAVE BREWIS
there were more guitars in the Stones camp,” says Brewis. “Is it the one on the cover of Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out? It’s definitely had a vibrato on it but I don’t know. But 1964 to 1966, it’s absolutely cast-iron definite that guitar was Keith’s. After that, I don’t know for sure. I’ve seen photos of Jagger with what looks to be the same guitar recording Beggars Beggars Banquet Banquet... there are a couple of shots of Keith with it when the pickgua rd’s gone but the Bigsby Bigsby is still still on it. But, But, as I say say,, after 1966, I wouldn’t definitely say it was that guitar.” guita r.” When Brewis stumbled across the guitar, guita r, it was owned by Mike Jopp who’d who’d played in a band called Affinity, with Mo
50
Foster, back in the 60s before he reti red from music. He, apparently, bought the guitar guita r in 1974. “Mike told me he’d bought it from Bernie Marsden and Bernie had bought it, just just about about a week week befor before, e, from from Cosmo Verrico. I’d spoken to Cosmo and he told me he’d got the guitar guita r when he was in a band called the Heavy Heavy Metal Metal Kids Kids and was signed to Atlantic Records. His own Les Paul had gone missing in transit or had been stolen, I think, and he had no guitar. He told his guy at Atlantic that he needed a Les Paul and was presented with this guitar by someone called Phil Carson, who ran Rolling Stones Records out of Atlantic. It was a ‘the band has no use for this guitar now, you you can have it’ sort of thing.” It’s a plausible tale but, according to the current Heavy Metal Kids website, Cosmo didn’t join the band until Januar y 1975 just prior to the recording of their second album; he’d left by the time the third was recorded. It seems, that trying to be precise about this guitar’s guita r’s ownership or whereabouts whereabouts from 1966 to 1974, is difficult. A reason perhaps the Stones’ ‘people’ have asked for it to be returned to them? Dave Brewis brokered the deal for the guitar to pass from Mike Jopp to a collector/memorabilia collector/memorabilia company in New York. “But about a year later, in 2004, they decided to sell it. They put it in a Christie’s auction, co-hosted by an auction company called Julien’s. The founder, Darren Julien, called me asking about the guitar’s history and did I know about any Stones’ guitars bei ng stolen? All I could say was that Mike had h ad it for 30 years, it had been in books and magazines and there had been no issues with it. The Stones wanted it back as soon as it hit the catalogue but it was allowed to go to auction auction,, so obviously there was a stalemate, or whatever, reached there. The seller was happy with that, but the guitar didn’t meet its reserve. In 2006, the same seller called me again to say he was still interested in selling it. I mentioned it to Music Ground in Leeds and they had someone in mind for what is the first ‘rock star’ Les Paul – eventually, a deal was done. I’ve never owned it, but I’ve seen it whiz past twice.” The Keithburst now resides in Switzerland, with a musician/collector. musician/collector. Its value? “I think it could could well become become the the first first million-dollar Les Paul because of its history,” muses Brewis. “Actually, I think it could already be there.”
SUNBURSTS |1959
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H A N D B O O K
’ T S A E B E H T ‘ A K A D R A D N A T S L U A P S E L 9 5 9 1
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SUNBURSTS | BENCH
T E S T
’BURST AMONG EQUALS What happens if you pit a 1959 ’Burst, dubbed ‘The Beast’, which has been played on historic recordings by Paul Kossoff and Whitesnake’s Bernie Marsden, against three accurate reissues? We find out…
W
hat’s often missing from the debate about how close high-end reissues get to original ’58 to ’60 Sunburst Les Pauls is direct comparison. We were blown blown away away by the quality quality of recent recent top-notch Gibson Custom ’Burst reissues, such as the True T rue Historic 1960 Murphy Aged, reviewed reviewed back back in issue issue 401, 401, or the Collector’s Choice #18 1960 Les Paul ‘Dutchburst’ from issue 392, which, like all of the Collector’s Choice Choice guitars, g uitars, was modelled on a specific surviving ’Burst. The sound and feel of those instruments was truly sensational, as it must be to justify the prices they command, which are saltier than a kipper’s tears. But what happens when such painstaking reissues – replicas might be a better word – are placed side-by-side side-by-side with a real ’Burst of the same year-class? Unless you’re you’re Joe Bonamassa, that’s not something you can do
“Mick Dyche’s Dyche’s jaw just dropped. I had an old Hiwatt stack and he thought I’d I’d turned it up from f rom six to nine…” nine…” BERNIE MARSDEN
Words Jamie Dickson Photography Jesse Wild
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every day. Which leaves some questions for the rest of us to mull. For example, how close do the best reissues get in terms of tone and character to surviving ’Bursts? And does the concept of a hyper-accurate reissue make any sense when the vagaries vaga ries of 1950s manufacturing – in which guitars were made by hand from a varying stock of components components – meant each original ’Burst was effectively unique? And, finally, is there some magic that age and scarcity imparts to original ’Bursts that just can’t be captured in a new guitar, however good they are? MEET THE CONTENDERS
To help us answer some of these questions, we enlisted the help of Whitesnake legend Bernie Marsden, who – after gamely accepting our invite to come and A/B the pride of his guitar collection with some high-end reissues – casually arrives at Guitarist with the better part of £1 million worth of vintage Les Pauls in t he back of his car! The day that unfolded was to be filled with unforgettable guitars, outrageous tone, brilliant brilliant stories stories from from Bernie Bernie about about guitar trading in the glory days of the 70s, plus a lot of loud, exciting playing that left big grins plastered over our faces. The crown jewel of the bunch was, of course, the original ’59 ’Burst that Bernie has owned since the mid-7 m id-70s, 0s, which has since passed into g uitar folklore, to the extent of acquiring its own fearful nickname, ‘The Beast’. But, quite unexpectedly, he also brought along a stunning 1960 ’Burst from his collection that is less often seen in public – and just to really ruin our day he also uncased a modded ’54 Goldtop that he thought we might like to try, just for kicks… kicks… Mercy Mercy!! Representing the cream of modern reissues, we laid our hands on three exceptional exceptional Gibson Historic Select ’Bursts to compare to Bernie’s originals. These ’58-, ’59- and ’60-spec reissues are, in fact, rather special in their own right: they belong to a ‘UK Collection’ of guitars that was built in extremely limited numbers by Gibson Custom. Only five examples of each model have been built to date – their tops were hand-selected from among hundreds of stunningly figured maple boards by a group of veteran British guitar guita r retailers at Gibson’s Gibson’s Custom workshop in Nashville, Tennessee. These True Historic-class guitars feature (among (among other exacting details) lab-grade recreations of the original origina l plastics, Gibson’s Gibson’s Alnico Alnico III III Custom Custom Bucker Buckers, s, period period-cor -correct rect
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2
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1. Half
a century of
playing has resulted in buckle rash
2. Few
traces of the
screen printed ‘Les Paul’ logo remain on the headstock of Bernie’s weathered but beautiful Beast
3. “The
volume controls
work from one to 10, too, which is good,” says
pickup covers, covers, plus hand-aged finishes based on those of surviving survivi ng ’Bursts and an average, unrelieved body-only weight of 6lbs (2.72kg). (2.72kg). When we had lined them up a longside Bernie’s Bernie’s beauties, we almost had to laugh at what we had in front of us down at the Guitarist studio Guitarist studio – not so much an embarrassment of riches as an outright, filthy scandal. Our O ur goal? Well, first up we weren’t aiming for scientific analysis here, nor even a traditional ‘review’. Rather, we wanted to glean the honest impressions of a bunch of experienced guitarists – including Guitar Techniques editor Techniques editor Neville Marten and Guitarist deputy Guitarist deputy editor David Mead – playing six truly exceptional guitars and a nd talking about what we heard and felt: the contrasts, the similarities and the surprises. No winners or losers, as such, but maybe some myths dispelled and some rare insights gained. So, which ’Burst to examine first? In the end, it could only be one guitar…
Bernie. “It’s not always the case”
TAMING THE BEAST
“I got this g uitar in 1974 from a guy who started showing up at a few shows,” Bernie recalls, as he cradles the beautifully weathered 1959 Les Paul, which, he tells us, formerly belonged belonged to Paul Kossoff. Circumstantial evidence suggests that it may once have been Eric Clapton’s, too – but more of that in due course… “I was in a band called Wild Turkey Tu rkey at the time with the late Glenn Cornick Cornick who was a big guitar buff,” Bernie begins. “He really knew his stuff a nd he was one of the first ones, along with Mick Ralphs [of Bad Company], Company], to spot the t he vintage bargains you could buy in the pawn stores in America. “Anyway, one night we were at The Marquee and somehow this guy had gotten backstage, which wasn’t easy at The Marquee in those days, and he passed me this g uitar for the encore. It was still [unfaded] Cherry Sunburst back back then. And A nd he just said, ‘ It’s in tune,’ and so I took it out for the encore and Mick Dyche, Dyche, the other guitar g uitar player in Wild Turkey, well, his jaw just dropped. He thought I’d turned up the amp – I had an old Hiwatt stack and he thought I’d turned it up f rom six to nine,” Bernie recalls of t he savagely loud but expressive PAF PAF pickups that helped give The Beast its name. “And so I talked to this guy afterwards and he said, ‘I think you should should have this.’ And I said, said, ‘What do you want for it?’ When
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he told me, I said, ‘Oh, forget it – out of the question.’ But he was determined I should have it. So, he said, ‘Well, you can have it for this kind of money,’ and he also took a Strat, which would be worth a few quid now – I think it was a ’66 Strat – plus a ’69 or ’68 Les Paul Custom. But in the end, I think I got the better deal. Although that’s not important, really – it was the g uitar. “Anyway, “Anyway, I didn’t see this guy again for about a year, but when I did, he said, ‘How’s the guitar?’ It was right by me, as it always was in those days and so I said, ‘Well, it’s wonderful.’ And he said, ‘ You You know, it’s strange that Clapton should let a guitar like that go.’ And I just said, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ and that’s when I made the Eric Clapton connection. It was no big deal, though that sounds crazy these days. And then he did did say, say, ‘I bet that’s that’s the one he did Blues Breakers on.’ Now, I knew it wasn’t, because because I knew knew the the Blues Blues Breaker Breaker Les Paul wasn’t a ’59 – and t here were pictures of that guitar with w ith the pickup covers missing and stuff, whereas the covers have never been off The Beast’s pickups. But then later, I found out that it was was the guitar guita r that had been Paul Kossoff’s. Kossoff’s. The one he had got from Eric Clapton, Clapton, because the guy t hat sold it to me bought it from f rom Andy Fraser and he said, ‘Yeah, there’s no doubt about it.’ He said it was the guitar that was on Fir on Firee And Water Water.. I saw the guy g uy who sold it to me again – only about three or four years ago – and he filled me i n properly and stated categorically that it had come from Paul and that it was the one that he [Paul] had got from Eric, hence the Eric Clapton connection. But it’s been with me for the past four decades and it’ll stay with me a bit longer longer,, I hope. hope. “Bonamassa plays it more than I do these days,” Bernie continues. “And Warren Haynes has played it a few times now as well. Jack Bruce said, ‘Hello, old friend,’ when he first saw it. And Jeff Beck said something, too, when I saw him on tour back in ’74, down in Purley. I was in his dressing room and he opened the case and straight away he said, ‘Is that Eric’s?’ “So, they know better than me, because they were actually there. But one of these days I’ll have to put it in the great man’s hands and say, ‘What do you think?’ I think he’d sound pretty pretty good with t his,” Bernie concludes concludes with a grin, before setting The Beast tantalisingly tantal isingly to one side to plug in a little later and compare with our ’59 reissue.
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Bernie Marsden’s gorgeous humbucker modified ’54 Goldtop
Vive La Difference! GIBSON’S LES PAUL WAS WAS essentially in an evolutionary state until the time, i n mid-1957, when it received the first PAF humbucking pickups and then, in late 1958, a Cherry Sunburst finish. The ’Burst is, of course, the model that has captured the hearts and minds of generations of guitarists all over the world. But the changes didn’t stop there; the next three years would see a few further, more subtle, tweaks before the model went into temporary hibernation late in 1960. For instance, in mid-1958, the name was changed from the ‘Les Paul
STAGE�READY ’60
As we we menti mentione oned d earlier earlier,, along along with The Beast, Bernie also brought along a second ’Burst for us to try – tthis his one a modified but gorgeous 1960 ’Burst, with an extraordinary figured top that glows with a fiery a mber light as we examine it. “Not a lot of people have seen this one,” Bernie says as he passes it round to us, instantly turning turni ng our faces a colour colour that would probably be described as ‘Green Burst’ in the catalogue if such an envious hue were ever to be sprayed onto a guitar. “I’ve had this g uitar some time. It’s a ’60 Standard that I bought about 20 years ago. It’s had a couple of problems, caused by me. I put it in a case once and I shut the lid on the headstock. I didn’t break the head, but I gave it a bit of a crack – so that’s been repaired. What I did, because I really liked the feel of the guitar, was take off most of the original parts, leave a couple of bits and add my custom pickups to it, and I’m quite happy that I did the whole thing, because it sounds better than ever ever.” .” PLUGGING IN
By mutual agreement, ag reement, we decide decide to audition the reissues before moving on to the originals to reveal how close these lovely British Collection guitars got. We have two excellent excellent amps on hand, a Marshall Astoria Custom combo, as reviewed in issue 400 of Guitarist , and a Dr Z Jaz 20/40 should an American American-voi voiced ced amp with a 6V6 6V6 powe powerr stage prove useful for contrast. Bernie is a Marshall man through and through, however, however, and it is the Astoria that get s the lion’s share of the playing action today. Our cable, for the signal-chain fetishists out
there, is a two-metre t wo-metre Van Van Damme Silver Series Mid-Capacitance model. To warm up our ears, we first plug in Bernie’s Goldtop Goldtop ’54, modded with ‘Beast Buckers’, that proves to have a mellow, smoky voice – quite dark and woody: a “real blues blues guitar”, guitar”, as Bernie Bernie observes. observes. After a pleasan pleasantt few few minutes minutes fooling fooling around with that, we move on to the first of our UK Collection, Gibson Historic Select reissues. It makes sense to go chronologically, chronologically, so we start with the ’58 spec model. This one already had a bit of an outing the day before when we we used it as a test ing guitar for a speaker-swap feature and Robben Ford’s tech Simon Law spent a lot of time playing it through the Dr Z t hen, where it sounded sensational: bright-ish but breathy and every inch a tone-hound’s blues-rock dream. The Sunburst of the subtly figured top mimics a vivid, unfaded Cherry – although the lacquer checking and forearm wear applied during the ageing process at Gibson suggests a well-used instrument. Gigged heavily by night, out of direct sunlight? You make up the backstory! It feels relatively light for a Les Paul, too, certainly lighter than The Beast, pointing to judicio judicious us wood wood selection. selection. Today Today,, we we hear hear it it through the Marshall first, at higher gain settings than with t he Dr Z. Bernie grinds out some sweltering swampy blues and the ’58 doesn’t disappoint, disappoint, just teetering on the edge of humbucker squeal as Bernie plays. “I’ve never had a ’58 myself, but the ’58 I knew the best was Micky Moody’s, which I knew when it was Mick Ralphs’. And that was a fabulous guitar,” Bernie says. “The neck on this feels very good, actually. The volume volume controls controls work work from from one to 10, 10, too, which is good – it’s not always the case.”
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Model’ to ‘Les Paul Standard’, while the red of ’58 Sunbursts was typically deeper in hue than that of later models. Despite the fact that figured maple tops are synonymous with this period, it’s reckoned only around 15 per cent of the guitars that left the factory in this year had figured maple. By mid-1959, the width of the fretwire had been increased to ‘jumbo’ size and minor cosmetic changes, such as a squarer jack plate and thinner ‘Rhythm/Treble’ ring around the toggle switch were in place, too. It’s thought that the red colour of the Sunburst was particularly prone to fading on the ’59s, eventually producing the ‘honeyburst’ effect that some collectors crave. At the beginning of 1960, the Les Paul remained pretty much unchanged, but gradually necks took on a thinner profile, with a wider peghead and the famous ‘tomato soup’ Sunburst – far less prone to fadi ng – became standard in the final classic year of the ’Burst.
SUNBURSTS |BENCH
All the hardware on The Beast is almost all original, barring the pickup ring on the neck pickup, which was replaced “on the road with Whitesnake,” says Bernie. “It split, we threw it away and put a DiMarzio on.” Meanwhile, the dark slash-mark that lies just to the right of the joint of the maple top was put there by Genesis fans throwing objects at a festival stage where The Beast was waiting on a stand!
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GIBSON LES PAUL
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4
5 4. The
“Later, I found out that “Later, t hat it was the guitar that had been Paul Kossoff’s. The one that he had got from Eric Clap Clapton ton… … When I showed it to Jackk Bruce Jac Bruce he sai said, d, ‘Hello, old friend’”
years have taken
an inevitable toll on the paint and lacquer work on The Beast
5. The Beast’s case is
fascinating in its own right – the BBKing tour sticker was given to Bernie by BB himself, while the gold braid was made by hand by a specialist who lives near Bernie
6. The
BERNIE MARSDEN
Beast’s full, round
neck profile is actually rather more comfortable in the hand than the shallowish D of the
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’60 ’Burst that Bernie brought along, which has quite hard-feeling edges. It bears evidence of heavy use
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Zebra Crossing “ANDY AT CRAZY PARTS
in
Germany approached me a couple of years ago in 2014,” Bernie Marsden tells us when we ask about the all-new ‘Beast Buckers’ fitted to his ’60 ’Burst, opposite, in place of PAFs. “I’d just finished the Shine album album
and he said, ‘Has
anybody talked to you about pickups?’ And I said well, ‘Funnily enough, yes, when they re-made The Beast at Gibson – but nothing happened.’ Andy makes remarkably good replica parts and so I said, ‘You should do pickups,’ and he said, ‘I do!’ And so he looked at The Beast and calculated the output of each pickup and everything else and then said, ‘What would you like?’ and so we came up with these.” The resulting pups are built from US components spec’d by Andy and wound by Marc Ransley of Mojo Pickups in the UK, who emulated the output of the original Beast by winding the Beast Buckers at 7.4k (neck) and 8.3k (bridge). “They also come in double-whites or creams, and you can have nickel covers or aged covers,” Bernie says. “They’re not cheap, but there again you don’t get anything really good cheap. And I just like the way they do the job and I have these on three of my old guita rs now.” www.crazyparts.de
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E
The ’58 Historic Select
U S
was the airiest and
S I
brightest sounding
E R
guitar on the day, but it
8 5 ’
still has plenty of punch
L U A P S E L
The top is the hotter Cherry of the earlier ’58 ’Burst, here with moderate wear applied by Gibson Custom E
A touch lighter than
U S
the ’58 Historic Select
S I
reissue, the ’59’s neck is
E R
similarly fulsome
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L U A P S E L
The tighter figuring and faded honey of the subtle ‘unburst’ top of the ’59 are classic
E
The gorgeous ’60 Historic
U S
Select reissue had
S I
the fattest, most fiery
E R
tone – but there wasn’t
0 6 ’
much in it
L U A P S E L
Broad, almost tigerstripe figuring on a top isn’t for everyone, but looks stunning here
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“There’s “There’s a nice balance between the pickups,” Nev adds. “The neck pickup isn’t mushing out. It’s the nicest of the three to look at for my tastes – it’s nice to see an actual Cherry Sunburst after so many that are made to be faded. It sounds great – it’s got plenty of balls and I like the dimensions of the neck. It’s a ’58 neck, but it’s not a huge thing. I like the dark rosewood ’board, ’board, too; it’s not too light in colour.” “It’s not clubby. It feels like a late ’58 into ’59 neck,” Bernie concurs. “I’m not keen on that much wear on it, though,” Nev adds. Having set the bar quite high, we move on to the classic year: t he Historic Select ’59 reissue. It has a nice, tight v iolin-like figure on the top and a nd the Sunburst is a little lit tle darker, with little trace of cherry suggested, beautifully beautifully evoking evoking an original original that that has faded and mellowed mellowed with time to a dark honey tint. The neck feels slightly more generous even than the ’58, but again, remains the right side of ‘baseball-bat’. Plugged in, there’s just a little bit more aggression, bass and punch to its tone. Again, there’s that lovely harmonic grind to the edge of the note, but everything ’s a touch fuller-sounding. “This one seems to have a bit more bite on it,” Bernie says. “It’s set up well and this one’s just a little little bit bit lighter lighter than the the ’58. ’58. But then again I’ve been carrying The Beast around for years and that’s just over 9lbs. Though I’ve got the shoulder to prove it!” With the sound of the ’59 still fresh in our ears, we switch to our last True Historic model, the ’60 reissue. After a few bars of intense, bluesy soloing, Bernie pronounces that “this one’s one’s a bit angry! The neck on this is a lot bigger than on my ’60,” Bernie adds. “This isn’t actually a lot slimmer than the last one, the ’59. But I’m sure not every guitar made in 1960 had a slim neck.” “They all actually sound quite similar, within the ballpark,” Nev adds. “It’s “It’s the tiny ti ny subtleties that get you or don’t get you. If you went into a shop and tried these guitars, one might talk to you – the next might talk to Jamie and the next might talk to David.” Our editor, Jamie, concurs – adding that the ’60 would be his choice so far, on the basis that “it sounds sounds a little fuller and when when you hit it, there’s there’s nothing nothing harsh harsh in the the note note at all”. He also likes the wider figuring in the top, as does Bernie, though as always, this is a very personal th ing. Nev and David prefer the subtler flame of t he ’58. There’s There’s really very little, objective objectively ly,, betwee between n these these fine guitars – just subtle points of preference.
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Another of Bernie Marsden’s collection: a modified 1960 Standard
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GIBSON LES PAUL
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1960 GIBSON LES PAUL STANDARD A new decade saw the Standard acquire a slimmer neck in the final year of its classic form
he 1958-to-1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard has since become – through a combination of its sheer utility, rarity, market hype and simply by being in the right players’ hands at the right time – the Holiest of vintage Holy Grails. This 1960 model from the Guitars: The Museum collection shows precisely why the hype (if not the crazy price tag) is justified. Jumbo frets had been introduced on the Standard by mid-1959, mid-1959, but it i s a slim mer neck profile that is typically thought of as the 1960-spec Standard’s defining feature. Even in today’s relatively chastened vintage ma rket, you’d you’d still expect to pay a six-figure sum to feel the weight of its ’Burst mahogany body and the drive of its PAFs: but then, it is the same historic tone that the likes of Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Keith Richards redefined blues and rock guitar with, and how do you place a value on that?
T
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PINK FLOYD 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
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NEW INTER VIEWS STORIES FROM STUDIO & STAGE ALBUM ART EXPLAINED 50 YEARS OF MUSIC FROM T HE MAKE RS OF
GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
GREEN PARTY It’s been a while since Kirk Hammett bought Peter Green’s iconic 1959 Les Paul. Paul. As recording recording began on a new Metallica album, a lbum, upon which the gu itar is featured,
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Guitarist
t’s unusual for an instrument instr ument to become as famous as the players who have made music with it. In that respect, Peter Green’s Les Paul is in an extremely select group. Originally seen on stage with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Bluesbreakers, the guitar has a singular aura a round it as well as an amazing tone. Many words have been written – some speculative, others informed – about what it was that made the instrument instru ment sound so different in the middle pickup position. Peter himself said he never touched the wiring when the guitar was in his h is possession and that the guitar guita r sounded that way way the day he bought bought it, inspiring inspiring many to believ believe e it it was was inverted polepieces that were at the heart of the mystery, as opposed to the neck pickup merely being reversed. In any case, the Les Paul not only found notoriety notoriety within the Bluesbreakers, it also went on to feature in many classic Fleetwood Mac recordings and live appearances. After Peter Peter Green Green mysterio mysteriously usly quit the music scene scene in the early 1970s, the guita r found its way into the hands ha nds of another legendary player, player, Gary Moore. Gary told us in an interview that Peter just called him up one day and offered him the guitar, initially refusing payment. In the end, it was agreed that Gary would give him the cash from selling the Gibson SG he was currently cur rently using and the deal was done. Over the years, the
caught up with Kirk to see how ‘Greeny’ is faring
guitar went on to appear on many more recordings and live dates – often at considerably higher volume levels than before. before. In the the mid-90 mid-90s, s, Gary paid tribute tribute to For or his former mentor with the album Blue album Bluess F Greeny and Greeny and once again those plaintive ‘out-of-phase’ tones could be heard on re-readings of classic Peter Green material. Gary kept the Les Paul until around 10 years ago when when it it was was sold sold and the guitar was temporarily retired from f rom public life. All that that was set to change, change, though, when when the the somewhat somewhat controversial sale to Metallica’ Metal lica’ss guitar player took place. Peter Green’s precious guitar in a heavy rock band? Whatever next! But, But, setting all a ll such prejudices aside, we have to say that Kirk is absolutely absolutely thrilled to be the guitar’s guitar ’s most recent owner. When we spoke to him he was on his way to the studio and positively frothy with excitement and extremely eager to share the details of how he came about this holy relic guitar. “Well, you know it’s really weird because I didn’t pursue it like I have pursued other guitars in the past – really agg ressively going going after certain guitars gu itars and working out deals. This is more just a situation where I was sitting in my hotel room in London one day and I texted a friend of mine and he said, ‘Oh, I have a guitar I wanna show you,’ and I said, ‘Okay, sure. Bring it over.’ And when he says he has a guita r that he wants to show
me, more than likely it’s a vintage guitar a nd even more likely it’s a Les Paul Standard because because this guy’s guy’s known known for that type of guitar. So he came over with this ot her guy and they also brought over a vintage Marshall combo. My friend brought over the guitar case, opened it up, and immediately I knew what it was because I saw the pickup screws inverted. “I was like, ‘Hey, hey, hey, hey. Wait a second here. Wait a second. I don’t have $2 million for this g uitar,’ and my friend said, ‘Oh, that’s all poppycock. I don’t know where that came from. That was the original price maybe 10 or 12 years ago, but that’s since been adjusted’ adjusted’. I said, ‘Great, ‘Great,’’ and and I plugged plugged it into the vintage Ma Marshall rshall amp, turned it up and played it. After about 30 seconds, I thought to myself, ‘Wow, this is not your standard Les Paul…’ and I went to t he middle position, because, you know, that’s the revered sound and I started ripping out and I thought to myself, ‘Holy shit, this is a total contradiction.’ contradiction.’ “It sounded like an incredible Les Paul in the bridge position and in t he neck position, but when when you you put it in in the the middle middle position position it kind of sounded like a Strat through a 100-watt Marshall stack! And then I got it. I got it. I understood completely what Greeny was all about. And you know the history side, the fact that it’s been on all these albums a nd all this great music, but aside aside from all that,
Words David Mead Photography Jeff Yeager
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GIBSON LES PAUL
ABOVE Kirk isn’t hiding Greeny away. Shortly
H A N D B O O K
the bare fact of the matter is that it’s just an ama zing sounding guitar. It just blew me away and everything just kind of made sense.”
after he purchased the guitar, “she was up on stage in front of 40 to 50,000”
RIGHT The RIGHT The Les Paul has a “singular aura” around it, as well as an incredible tone
FAR RIGHT Peter Green claimed to have never touched the wiring while the guitar was in his possession
How did you celebrate your ownership of the guitar? And when did you first play it in front of an audience?
“The first thing I wanted to do was play it on stage that night a nd Jar, because the likelihood of that guitar having play Whiskey In The Jar, Jar was already prett y huge. So when I played played Whiskey In The Jar was it that first time on stage it felt like I was bringing it back home to where it needed to be and wanted to be. And you know, to be quite honest, since then I’ve heard of other guitars, of other Les Pauls, that sold for way more than what I bought Greeny for. And so, to a certain extent, I was at the right place at the right time, because the owner needed a quick infusion of cash and I was able to do that and secure the guitar guita r and then we worked out out all the other ot her matters afterwards. “But having said that, once the news got out that I’d actually bought bought the guitar I started started getting all these these differen differentt emails emails from from people I’d never even heard of or spoken to before about their experiences with Greeny. It’s just totally, completely amazing because because this guitar guitar has has its its own own world, world, its own separate separate reality, reality, completely completely separate to mine and I’ve never really owned a guitar that has its own personality. It’s completely independent of myself and I love that fact as well.” What’s the guitar like to play?
“It’s fairly light for a Les Paul. I definitely own heavier Les Pauls, but the amazing thing is that the neck is pretty th ick. I can play play a thin neck, I can play a thick neck, I can play a V-shaped neck… I can play
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just about about any any sort sort of neck you give me; it’s never been a problem for me. When you pick up Greeny and you start playing Oh Well or Albatross Albatross,, it sounds like the recording. It’s Well unplugged, just amazing. You play Oh Well unplugged, acoustically, and it sounds like Greeny. It’s the most amazing th ing. And the resonance is pretty outrageous. It’s pretty loud acoustically, it has a lot of body to it and the tone rings through even without an amp. Once I got the guita r into my possession, I handed the guitar to John Marshall – he was my guitar tech forever and he actually played with Metallica for a short period of Well,’ and he started time – I said, ‘Play Oh Well,’ playing it and he goes, ‘Ah wow! It sounds just like it!’ and I said, said, ‘Exactly! ‘Exactly! Isn’t Isn’t that incredible?’ And so there you have it, man. It truly is breathtaking.” Were you a big fan of Peter Green’s guitar playing?
“Yes, for sure. I really love his playing on t he John Mayall albums as well as those Fleetwood Mac albums. I really, really love Supernatural. I love it because the track The Supernatural. when he hits those notes it says it all. And from time to time, I’ll pick up Greeny and I’ll
SUNBURSTS |‘GREENY’
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©
R A Y S T E V E N S O N / R E X / S H U T T E R S T O C K
ck Magic Magic Woman Woman or I’ll play Coming play Bla play Black Home Home or something and it feels there, the feel is just so there. t here. I just can’t believe it. Another Another thing that really is amazing amazing for me is the guitar gu itar was also played on Thin Lizzy’s Black Black Rose Rose,, which is one of my favourite Thin Lizzy albums. “I just love Peter Green. I love his playing. If there wasn’t a Peter Green there might not have been a Carlos Santana. I see a direct correlation – there’s a direct influence there.”
“This guitar has its own world, its own separate reality, completely separate to mine. I’ve never really owned a guitar that has its own personality ” KIRK HAMMETT
So, do you intend to keep using the guitar and not hide it away in a private collection?
Can you sum up what it’s like to own such a revered instrument?
“Absolutely. I’m not a guy who’ll buy a guitar just to stare stare at at it and covet covet it; it; that that is the death death of a vintage guitar. gu itar. Guitars are built to be played. The more they’re played, the better they sound, the more reactive they are. I bought Greeny and, literally, by the next show she was up on stage in front of 40 to 50,000 people, being sweat on all over by me. “I’m on my way to the studio right now. I texted my tech a nd said, ‘Have Greeny in tune, we’re using her today,’ and I’m going to try and use all of the three mai n sounds that are in her.”
“A really, really wacky thing is that whenever musicians come by and they know that I have Greeny, they always ask to have a picture taken with it. And it’s just kind of funny because it feels like how it might be if my wife was maybe a famous movie actress or something, with people constantly coming up to me saying, ‘Can you take a picture of me and your wife?’ I’m constantly stepping aside and manning a camera. That’s what what it’s like owning Greeny. I have taken more pictures of people people with that guita r than just about any other guitar I’ve ever owned.
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Greeny has its own fanbase, it’s amazing. And lots of people people have played played that guitar: Jimi Hendrix has played that guitar, Rory Gallagher, Jeff Beck, George Harrison… I mean, the list goes on and on and on. “The evening of the day I looked at it, I sent a message to Jimmy Page through a friend of mine saying, ‘Jimmy, what do you think of this thi s guitar?’ And Jimmy’s reaction was, ‘I remember that guitar. You should absolutely buy it.’ So I guess I should throw that in for the record that I have Jimmy Page’s approval. When Jimmy says, ‘Yes, you should buy it, Kirk,’ then it doesn’t get much better than that!” that!”
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CUSTOMS Introduced in late 1953, the Les Paul Custom was intended to be the ‘tuxedo’-clad, upmarket member of the Les Paul family. Standing apart from the gilded goldtops and workmanlike ‘Bursts that followed, the Custom was conceived concei ved as a refined jazz tool but became a p owe owerho rhouse use rock machine in the hands of latter-day masters, such as Peter Frampton, Billy Duffy and many more. Inspiring a cult following of their own, these monochrome beauties sported standout features under a sleek exterior…
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AMERICAN BEAUTY It was the executive model that raised the spec of the Goldtop and armed a roll-call roll-call of seminal player players. s. Sixty years since the ’57 incarnation, this is the story of the Les Paul Custom, with testimony from the stars who wielded it…
T
o the window-shoppers of London’s Tin Pan Alley, it was a new arrival to quicken the pulse. The jet-black lustre of the hourglass body. The shimmer of 24-karat hardware. The twinkle of the diamond headstock inlay. It was 1959, 1959, and with the lifting lifti ng of restrictions on US imports, the mythologised myt hologised Gibson Les Paul Custom was suddenly a tangible reality. “When I was a kid,” Steve Hackett tells us, “I used to walk down Shaftesbury Avenue and Denmark Street, staring in the windows, looking at instruments I couldn’t afford. And I used to think anyone who’s got a Les Paul Custom has already made it.” And that, of course, course, was what what the Gibson Gibson boardroom boardroom wanted wanted playe players rs to conc conclude lude when when faced with the Custom. The firm had already planted its flag deep into t he solidbody sector with its inaugural Les Paul release, the 1952 Goldtop. But But within two years, Gibson had spotted the potential for a higher-spec executive model, priced a princely $325 to its predecessor’s $225 (and in a different league to the $99 Junior). “You have all kinds of players out there who like this and li ke that,” Gibson president Ted McCarty noted in 1992. “Chevrolet had a whole bunch of models, Ford had a whole bunch of models. So did we.” It was dubbed the ‘Black Beauty’, and lived up to the billing. While Gibson had identified the Custom’s demographic, it was
Les Paul himself who insisted the ’54 original should be high-gloss black, for reasons of unabashed showmanship. “Everybody wanted to know, why black?” he reflected in his book. “And I said, ‘Because you can see your your hands move move when when you’re you’re on the stage and it looks good with a ny outfit you wear.’ wear.’”” Luxurious flourishes were sprinkled throughout the Custom. Gold-plated hardware was complemented by the split-diamond inlay lifted from Gibson’s flagship Super 400, while the truss rod cover was now embossed for swift identification. identification. Dig a little deeper, though, and t he ’54 revealed itself as more than a mere cosmetic face-lift. While the Goldtop had offered the familiar splice of a mahogany body and maple cap, the Custom’s seven-ply-bound body was pure mahogany, mahogany, deliverin delivering ga warmer, darker tone (it’s interesting to note that Paul felt this timber configuration would have better suited the cheaper model). The fingerboard was bound ebony, with block block fret inlays usurping usurping the Gold Goldtop’ top’s trapezoids and lower, flatter, faster fretwire prompting the Custom’s second nickname, ‘The Fretless Wonder’. The ’54 Custom, too, was notable as the first Gibson electric to employ the McCarty-conceived ABR-1 tune-o-matic bridge (added to the Goldtop the following year). Another defining feature of the ’54 was the pairing of bridge P-90 and
Words Henry Yates Photography N e i l G o d w i n
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“I opened the briefcase and showed the manager the money. money. I walked out with the Custom for £375. £375. It remains, remains, to this day, the finest Les Paul Paul I’ve I’ve ever ever playe played” d” ROBERT FRIPP
1 Seth Lover’s underrated neck-position Alnico 5: a picku pickup p whose whose aluminium-n aluminium-nick ickelelcobalt alloy, alloy, distinctive rectangu lar polepieces polepieces and gutsy g utsy output met the designer’s brief to deliver a new unit that outpunched the DynaSonic used by rivals Gretsch. “I wanted to be different,” he told Gibson biographer Tony Bacon. “I didn’t want them to be round like DeArmond’s. I don’t like to copy things. If you’re going to improve something then I thought you should make it different. “Also,” Lover continued, continued, in the same interview, “by making [the polepieces] polepieces] that shape, I could put screws between for height adjustment. adjustment. But that pickup was never too popular, because the players would always adjust them up too tight to the strings. They’d get that slurring-type tone and they didn’t like that.” 60s luminaries from Jimi Hendrix to Robby Krieger all conjured conjured magic with t he first-generation Custom – but there’s an argument that the ’57 incarnation made even more of an impact. Built upon the same foundations, this new variant upped the artillery with t hree Lover-designed PAF PAF
humbuckers, humbuckers, and although the initial production run only lasted from 1957 to 1961, this fully fu lly loaded model left an indelible mark on popular culture. Before Led Zeppelin financed his “guitar army” of Teles, Standards and doublenecks, the young Jimmy Page could be seen toting a three-pickup t hree-pickup,, Bigsby-equipped Bigsby-equipped Mk#2 Custom across the London session scene. Formerly an exponent of the ’Burst, by 1966, Keith Richards had acquired four Customs, including his memorable ’57 with crescentmoon DIY paint-job and bottletop control knobs. Early Stones tours saw an open-G Street Fighting Fighting Man tuned Custom used for Street Jumpin’ Jack Jack Flash Flash – although Keef’s and Jumpin’ patronage of the model was curtailed when two Beauties were stolen from the dissolute Exile Exile On Main Main Stre Street et sessions at Nellcôte. PROG RICHES
Even the rising stars of prog-rock were in thrall to the Custom, with Robert Fripp recalling that a ’59 example drove all of King Court Of Of Crimson’s output from 1969’s In The Court The Crimson King to to 1974’s Red . “The salesman was pretty loathsome,” he noted of
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acquiring the guitar i n London. “But we’d we’d been given a loan loan and I had had a briefcas briefcase e with with a large sum of cash inside. I asked about a discount for cash and was refused. So I opened the briefcase and showed the manager the money. I walked out with the Custom for £375. It remains, to this day, the finest Les Paul I’ve ever played.” It’s a sentiment echoed by Steve Hackett: “I bought two Les Paul Customs in 1971. Black with the three t hree gold pickups. I’d just joined joined Genes Genesis. is. I did did some some shows shows with with a Melody Maker, but it fed back and wasn’t really loud enough to cut through the sound of Phil Collins in rehearsal. Just the sound of him acoustically laying into the kit – I’d never worked worked with a drummer that loud! “I needed something with more power,” Hackett continues. “And so, when we were Nursery Cryme Cryme [1971], I rehearsing for Nursery acquired the stuff I needed, including those first Les Paul Customs. Unfortunately, those guitars were both stolen, within two weeks of each other. From 1973, I used a Goldtop. I wish I knew what happened to them…” If the Custom was a target for th ieves, by 1968, replacements were readily available.
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3 4 1. Better
known for playing
– and occasional occasionally ly
3. The
figure 7 at the
beginning of the serial
demolishing – a
number denoted
Stratocaster live on
’57 as the year of
stage, Jimi Hendrix
manufacture… note
could sometimes be
also the Kluson
spotted using a ’55
‘Waffleback’ tuners;
Les Paul Custom on
later models would
‘Red House’
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4. First
among the deluxe
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appointments afforded
all mahogany, giving
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plated parts, giving the
warmer soundprint
guitar a luxurious sheen
Having shelved the Les Paul at the start of the 60s, Gibson had sensed the t he demand for secondhand models sparked by Eric Clapton’s tenure in the Bluesbreakers, and began a new new prod productio uction n run run that that inclu included ded a Custom reissue. “The revival of these instruments answers a pressing need,” explained the firm’s Jim Tite. “It will no longer be necessary to search for used models that auction for $700 to $1,000.” Now priced $545, with twin humbuckers, humbuckers, a maple cap and a wider palette of finishes, the Kalamazoo-built ’68 Custom had arguably lost a little of the orig inal’s identity, identity, but it was was still still a magnet for influential influential players. Mick Ronson would use a strippedfinish ’68 for his Ziggy Stardust-era Stardust-era work alongside David Bowie, and his choice caught the imagination of a young Randy Rhoads. “In 1972, Bowie played at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium,” recalled the late Ozzy sideman’s brother, Kelle Rhoads. “That’s where Randy saw Mick Ronson with that Les Paul. At that time, t ime, Randy had a black SG. When he got rid of [the SG], he looked for a guitar like Mick’s, and he found it at a Guitar Center – a ’74 Custom.”
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In the late 70s, while KISS’s Ace Frehley shot fireworks from a three-picku th ree-pickup p Custom, British punk took the model back to basics, with Mick Jones using his Beauty to power Rope and The Clash’s Give ’Em Enough Rope and Steve Jones bringing snarl to the Pistols’ Never Pistols’ Never Mind Mind The The Boll Bollocks ocks with with his 70s example. “Malcolm McLaren was managing the New York York Dolls for a while, while,”” he noted. noted. “When “When he finished managing them, he brought this guitar back to England. It had a Bigsby, but I took it off because the thing kept going out of tune.” While the classic Les Paul Custom has rolled on through the decades – its spec sheet broadly broadly sticking sticking to the the ’68 ’68 reissu reissue e – Gibson Gibson has spiced the product line with variants, some more successful successful than tha n others. In 1972, the Custom ’54 Ltd Edition tipped its hat to the founding father, complete with P-90 and Alnico pickups. pickups. In 1974, 1974, we we welc welcomed omed a 20th 20th Anniversary Anniversary reissue, reissue, and in 1987 1987,, Gibso Gibson n unveiled the Custom Lite, with a weightcutting contoured body that meant it cost more than the regular model (at $1,249 compared with $1,170). Confusingly, the 35th Anniversary Anniversary Custom Custom of of 1989 1989 featured featured the
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’57-era ’57-era three-pickup format, while the 1991 Custom Plus debuted a higher-grade figured flame top, and the 1994 Custom ’57 Centennial had gold/diamond trimmings that verged on gaudy. Just as Gibson’s production line has never stopped rattling off the Custom, so t he roll-call of noted exponents has kept on growing. Rewind to the 90s, and James Dean Bradfield unleashed the fieriest licks of the Brit-rock scene on a white 1990 example, nicknamed ‘Faithful’ a nd picked up from Macari’s on Denmark Street after the Manic Street Preachers signed with Columbia. “Getting this Les Paul was Shangri-La to me,” reflects Bradfield, who had previously played a Tele Thinline. “A white Les Paul Custom is not many people’s lead guitar,” he continued, “but I just thought, ‘Steve Jones! Jones! Lindsey Buckingham! Mick Jones!’ When I bought it, I remember remember thinking, ‘I can’t wait for this g guitar uitar to be old.’ And now it is. It’s It’s weathered weathered,, been been on all 12 albums. albums. The The neck’s been broken twice, once live, and during recording The Holy Bible [1994]. It’s had four pickup changes…” STARTING YOUNG
Black Market A buyer’s guide to the Les Paul Custom NOW, AS IN 1954, the Les Paul Custom is an aspirational choice with a price tag
to match. Head to the Gibson website in 2017 and – putting aside the signature guitars – you’ll find two choices. Of these, the top-dollar option is the True Historic 1957 Custom, putting period-correct features and twin-humbucker performance in your hands for circa £5,500. That’s undercut by the stock Custom, which offers a credible 490R/498T configuration and a choice of finishes for south of four grand. If that’s still a little too ‘executive’ for your liking, the answer could be an Epiphone. Priced around £440, the Les Paul Custom Pro looks the part, approximates the roar of PAFs with its coil-splittable ProBuckers and is available as a lefty. Epiphone is also your cheap ticket to triple-humbucker action in the form of the Les Paul Black Beauty (£540), while P-90 purists should consider the Inspired By 1955 model (£580).
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Post-millennium, Post-millennium, the Custom has been seen in the ha nds of some of rock’s most technical players, not least Matt Heafy of Trivium, who has released his own six- and seven-string Epiphone models, souping up the venerable format with active EMGs. “When I was thinki ng of doing a signature guita r,” he noted, noted, “I wanted to pick my favourite guitar. And my favourite guitar was one my dad gave me when I was 11 years old. He gave me a Les Paul Custom, which is an absurd thing for an 11 year old to get for their first guitar. “I played it on most of our records, and it was always my favourite, so when we were engineering [2013’s Vengeance Falls ], I sent it to Epip Epiphon hone e and and said, said, ‘Copy ‘Copy this. Make it play as close as possible to this g uitar and look like this g uitar, and make just a few changes.’ I always thought the Les Paul was the perfect i nstrument, so I didn’t want to mess with it too much, aside from just putting my stamp on it. There’s something fortunate about being a Les Paul player, that it translates across multiple guitar players all using the same body.” body.” Six decades down the line, it’s fair to say the Les Paul Custom has never been quite so fêted a s its younger sibling, the Standard. And yet, to those who know, this model is the connoisseur’s choice. Having dabbled in Ibanez and Dan Armstrong models, Justin Hawkins of The Darkness is in no doubt of the Les Paul Custom’s siren call. “I noticed that after I star ted playing my white Custom, they started selling a white Les Paul Studio, which is like a stripped-down version. version. It would annoy me when people said, ‘Oh, he plays a Studio.’ It’s like, ‘No – it’s a Custom!’ “I always wanted to be the white Custom g uy,” he concludes. “In every generation of bands, there’d be one player who was the white Custom player. Sex Pistols. Thunder. Manic Street Preachers. There was always one guy that was carrying carry ing the torch…”
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While the humbucker-equipped ’57 Les Paul Custom may be the definitive model, it has an older brother that’s arguably even cooler. We join Little Bar rie guitarist guitar ist Barrie Cadogan to talk tal k about his new album, Death Express, and hear the story of how he restored a ’55 Custom – with its distinctive ‘Staple’ neck pickup – back to its former glory
B
arrie Cadogan is one of the most stylish and incisively melodic melodic guitarists working today. today. From his work with Primal Scream to the theme music to Bett to Better er Call Call Saul Saul,, his terse 60s-inspired riffs seem carved from gold Plexiglas and dust-caked fuzz circuits. We join join him to talk ta lk about his latest album, Dea album, Death th Express Express.. Recorded with his garage-rock trio Little Barrie featuring Virgil Howe Howe (son (son of Steve) Steve) on drums and Lewis Wharton on bass, it looks set to be one of the coolest retro-toned albums of the year – especial especially ly as it it features features Barrie’s restored ’55 ‘Black ‘Black Beauty’ LP Custom as its mainstay guitar…
Let’s kick off with the new Little Barrie album, Death Express …
“Yes, that album has been recorded recorded and done. The plan is to get it out for March or April. April. We’ve We’ve just released released a single single off it called Love Love Or Or Love Love.. This year we’re going to push for the album and try and tour it as much as we can. It’s the first album we’ve produced and recorded ourselves. “We did it on very primitive gear, but we learned a few tricks over the years about working with what we’ve got. And we felt we’d reached the point where we were making interesting sounds on our own, whereas before, before, with the previous setup, we weren’t quite there. We’ve been making our
own demos for a long long time, but with this album we thought, ‘We’ve made something different here – we’ve captured something in our demos that we’ve always loved.’” The amp tones are stunning. How did you get them?
“All the guitars on the new album are done with the JPF combo that Frank Cooke built for me. And, actually, all the bass was done through that as well. It’s based around a JTM45 Bluesbreaker sort of vibe, but it doesn’t have a presence control. But I wanted it with the KT66 tubes, not EL34s, because I think I just prefer that sound. It’s not as high-gain. It’s a teeny bit more Fender in a
Words Jamie Dickson Photography J o b y S e s s i o n s
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“I saw the picture of this black Les Paul in Guitarist and it was the coolest thing thin g I’d I’d seen. But you didn’t see that kind of early Les Pa Paul ul Custo Custom m around a lot” BARRIE CADOGAN
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way, and the way they feed back is really musical – there’s a harmonic overtone I like and it’s those kind of tubes on the early Hendrix recordings as well, I g uess. There’s something about that sound that’s magical. “ Shadow Shadow, the previous album, was done with a white piggyback Fender Bassman and the JPF, switching between the two. But, for some reason, for this album, it came out good using this amp. a mp. It’s something different.”
“The Custom is really good for 50s fingerstyle things, like Travis picking and stuff. stuf f. It’s It’s a really r eally sweet sound, but when you crank it, it , it’s it’s amazing” BARRIE CADOGAN
How do like to mic up a mps for those retro garage-band tones?
“We’re still experimenting with it. Three of the previous four albums were made at Edwyn Collins’ studio, which had amazing gear that Edwyn bought from the 80s onwards. So they had a Neve desk and they had Telefunken gear and that level of stuff. But when we’re recording ourselves, we’re experimenting a little bit. I’m not that studio savvy, but we close-mic the guitars with a 70s Sennheiser that was loaned to us, which apparently is the mic that Pink Floyd used a lot on guitars. To be honest, I’m not that knowledgeable on Pink Floyd. I’m more of a Barrett-era fan, but I appreciate appreciate the other ot her stuff, too. But we were close mic’ing with that and using my friend’s U-47 clone for an ambient mic. We did most of the drums, guitars and a nd bass with three microphones. But a lot of it’s coming off one, really, because that’s the sound we liked.”
1. Retrofitting
I play live, if it’s not a fuzz, it’s just a guitar st raight into the amp. I don’t own any overdrive pedals. I’ve never been that much of a fan. I always feel like they kind of shrink t he sound a bit. I’d rather rather get it from the amp. It’s deeper and wider.” Do you find that overdrives can sometimes stifle the cutting edge and dynamics in your amplified a mplified tone? “Yes, and I think they lead people into using too much gain. So many people use too much gain on sounds, and when you get into that game, to be honest, a £50,000 g uitar can sound like a £500 guitar. A lot of it ends up sounding the same.”
a Bigsby to
a vintage guitar might seem like heresy to some, but Barrie figured that his Les Paul was a refin anyway – and he used a Bigsby a lot, so why not?
2. Years
of playing wear
have revealed the
Last time we caught up, you had a P-90- equipped, offset solidbody custom-built by Philippe Dubreuille…
mahogany underneath the black finish on the
“Yes, I still use that a lot. I use a couple of different different custom guitars. I use the white one at every g ig – and there’s another that has a Jazzmaster-style trem, which is a lot more twangy and surf y. I use that one quite a lot for recording. recording. Besides that, I still use 330 and, of course, the Les Paul Custom as well.”
back of the neck
3. The
’55 Black Beauty
was the mainstay on Barrie’s latest album
There’s also some pretty savage fuzz on some of your stuff.. stuff....
You’ve always championed ES-330s. What do you You’ve particularly like about them?
“I’ve tried d ifferent ones. The pedalboard I’ve got is largely custom-built by Christian Livingstone who does Magnetic Effects. So I’ve got a couple of custom-built fuzzes by him that I use, a nd I also use a repro Sola Sound Tone Bender and a Cornell Fuzz Face. I’ve used a couple couple of different things over the years – I used a 60s 60s Schalle Schallerr fuzz fuzz that that belonged belonged to Edwyn Edwyn Collins Collins’’ engineer engineer,, Seb. Seb. But in the live ’board, I’ve got a custom-built thing, which is half way between a Fuzz Face and a Tone Bender – it’s got a tone control in it, so I can get it a bit more nasty and trebly if I want to get it a bit more like the star t of I Wanna Wanna Be Your Dog sort of thing.” To what degree do you find pedals useful in getting a vintage sound?
“Well, I used a Dr Scientist Reverberator Reverberator pedal on a short setting, like li ke a ‘bathroom’ Hell reverb setting, for tracks such as Surf Hell aves album, because from the King Of The Waves I liked that sound. But a lot of the time when
“Well, I was always drawn to these g uitars, sometimes for the way they look, but also the way they sound. I first saw it in The Stones In The Park [from Hyde Park, 1969], with Keith playing a 330 through those Hiwatts, and I tthought hought it was a brilliant sound. I like Paul Weller when he played his Casino, and I’d had 335s and 45s for a long time, but eventually I got one of those. They don’t give as much sustain, but there’s a real punch to them. They’re very dynamic, and they’re a little bit more raucous in a way. It’s the same with the P-90 Les Pauls – they’re more raucous than the PAF ones, I think, and I love that sound. But yeah, first I loved the imagery of t he 330, then I loved the sound. And I realised how much that guita r sound is on Stones stuff, Beatles stuff and even people like Grant Green. It’s good for soul music and R&B stuff. And so the 330 is still my favourite guitar, partly because I’ve had it t he longest.” Where does the ’55 Black Beauty come in?
“Well, I wanted one for years af ter seeing a Guitarist magazine article years ago. It must have been ’93 or ’95, something something like that, and I think my dad bought the magazine mag azine because he was a Metallica fan and it had James Hetfield on the cover. Anyway, I saw the picture of this black Les Paul inside and it was the coolest thing I’d seen. But you didn’t didn’t see see that that kind kind of of early early Les Paul Custom Custom around around a lot. lot. The The
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first proper Les Paul I had was a humbucker Les Paul Custom from the 70s, which was ace. It was light red and weighed a ton, but it sounded great. I always liked Les Pauls anyway, because of the Brit blues thing. “But the first time I saw a picture of anyone playing an Alnico-pickup Les Paul was Jimi Hendrix. He had one for a while in House ’68 in some of his g igs, for playing Red House or something. I thought it was a greatlooking guitar, but didn’t really know about those pickups and what they did. After that, I saw a few of them around occasionally, but never really had a chance to play one until later when I was living in London. A few were kicking around. The first time I tried the Staple pickup was in an old Gibson L-5, and then a Byrdland. I thought the sound was cool. “I loved the P-90 Goldtops, but there’s something about the black Custom that I really loved. I guess it’s the imagery. I tried a few over the years. I tried the early ’70 ones. I thought they were pretty good, but they ’re quite heavy, a lot of them. And I used to have an old Strat that was a ’63 that was refinished blue. blue. It It was was an ace guitar, but I never never ended ended up using it that much because the Strat just wasn’t my guitar. So I ended up selling that, and then I was looking around for something a bit cooler. “I had a Les Paul TV Special for a while, a single-cut one. It was good, but then a friend of mine in the States told me about this g uitar [the black Alnico-pickup Custom] Custom] and he knew who had it. We would sit around just talking about records and guitar sounds we liked and things like that. He helped me find that guitar and check it out.” How original is it?
“Someone had put up a T-Top humbucker in the bridge, so it had been routed out and it was a refinished body and stuff. But it meant it was reachable, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to afford it. But it had loads of potential. I managed to get hold of it, then took it to Gordon and Rob at Knight Guitars. They refilled the bridge pickup cavity [to fit a P-90] and put a repro pickup in there for a bit. Friends I knew from guitar gu itar circles helped me get other bits. Knight Guitars refretted it as well and did a cool job on that, and there were even some original caps – maybe bumbleb bumblebee ee caps caps – in the case, in a shitty state. But Gordon managed to get them working again and put them back in. “And then the guitar was up and running again and it was as it should be. However,
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Staple Singer Gibson’s ‘forgotten’ Les Paul pickup… THE SO-CALLED ‘ALNICO’ OR ‘Staple’ pickup was designed by Seth Lover on request from Ted McCarty. Although Lover had previously worked at Gibson, at the outbreak of WWII he’d enlisted in the US Navy. He rejoined Gibson in 1945 before he realised, in 1947, he could get a better job in the new Kalamazoo Navy training centre. In early 1952, 1952, however, the Navy decided you had to move from base to
later on I decided to get a Bigsby on it because because I thought, thought, ‘Well, ‘Well, it’s it’s refinished refinished and I use Bigsby a lot.’ I’d Bigsby’d all my other guitars, so then he found me the Bigsby. Bigsby. And then Martin Kelly said, ‘I’ve got an old P-90 I bought in a garage sale in America for $2. Do you want that?’ So then I had an orig inal pickup. It was a Les Paul Junior one, so I had to change the plate and then the g uys at Vintage Vintage said, said, ‘Do you you want want a cover cover?? I’ve I’ve got the original cover.’ cover.’ So they helped me get it a bit more original. “I was determined to try and get it more back back to spec if I could could without without it being being too expensive. So, yes, through the generosity generosity of other people, I got the guitar smiling again. But sound-wise, it’s killer. It’s really got a thing. I t hink P-90 pickups have become become more more popular popular over the last 10 years or so. PAFs were it for most people – and they do sound ace. But it’s a dif ferent vibe with the 330. You can get a lot of sounds out of that guitar.” How hot is the ’55 Custom, output-wise?
“Fairly. It’s not as high as the 330, but it’s pretty loud when you get it going. But it was interesting. A friend of mine has got an early Custom Shop ’59 Standard reissue that has now got original PAFs in it, and we compared the two through a little Fender. And, actually, actually, his guitar was was a bit louder louder – but even though his was loud louder er,, the P-90 pickup in the bridge was compressing the amp more. It was pushing the amp more, even though it was quieter. “But yeah, the Custom is really good for 50s fingerstyle things, like Travis picking and stuff. It’s a really sweet sound, but when you crank it, it’s amazing – in fact, one guy you did see with that guitar years
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base – not something Lover wanted to do. Around the same time, he was contracted by McCarty to do a ‘special job’ on designing a pickup – a direct response to the DeArmond 200 that was in use by Gretsch as the DynaSonic, with its heightadjustable magnetic polepieces. Using the same 10,000 turns for its coil as the existing P-90, instead of the DeArmond’s slug magnets housed in threaded sleeves, Lover went for six 28.6mm (1.125”) (1.125”) long rectangular magnets, each with their own height adjustment facility. Apparently, it was the first Gibson pickup to use Alnico V magnets. While these magnets produced a louder pickup, players tended to raise the magnets too close to the strings and cause unwanted wolf tones. While modern replicas of the Alnico pickup are rare, Jason Lollar has introduced his own Staple, a direct retrofit for a soapbar P-90 with six fixed-height rectangular magnetic slugs. “Someone loaned me an original late-50s Les Paul Custom for a gig,” says Jason. “Ever since, I’ve been fascinated with the sound of the original P-90 Staple pickup. We modified the design so it fits most soapbar routs with no modification to the guitar, [but] I voiced it to sound just like the legendary Les Paul Staple pickup that was loaned to me.”
CUSTOMS |1955
Barrie’s ’54 Custom came from the States and, with some help from his friends, he’s brought it back to its original spec
ago was Steve Jones – I think that was Sylvain Sylvain’s old guitar, wasn’t it? So it was great to play it when I was doing gigs with Primal Scream. It was really good for that, because it sounded like the Pistols in the back pickup when you really cranked it. But there’s lots of sounds in between. It’s really good for R&B stuff or blues, too. You can get it pretty jazzy, which I suppose is what it’s made for as well.”
4. Gibson
six-figure serial
5
numbers from this period have the year of production as the first digit, which confirms this LP as being a ’55
5. The
pickup selector
switch tip has aged to the classic shade of vintage amber,
We’ve seen a resurgence in interest in things like old Supros, Gold Foil pickups and the like. Do you think players are getting hungry for tones that are a little off the beaten track?
“People are discovering Valco stuff, Harmonys, Kays, Silvertones… and people are realising it’s givi ng them a different voice than maybe the stock sounds they’ve heard for years. They’re looking for something different, I think. For some reason, people always think PAFs are good because t hey’re loud, or something like that. But t he old ones aren’t super loud. They just sound really sweet. And, to be honest, if you just want loud guitars, get a Les Paul Junior. My 330’s the loudest guitar I’ve got, but loud isn’t always the best sound, either. With the Staple pickup, when you play it clean and quiet, it’s almost Fender-y. But the more you crank it, the fatter it gets.”
along with the subtle yellowing of the white binding
6. The
period-correct
electronics in Barrie’s guitar came from a variety of sources, including some original caps found in the case that were restored to working order
6
Little Barr Little Barrie’s ie’s lat latest est albu album, m, Death Express , is is out out now on Non-Delux Recordings. www.littlebarrie www.littlebarrie.com .com
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B L A C K
B E A U T Y
GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
1
2
84
CUSTOMS |DREAM
R I G S
1969
GIBSON LES PAUL CUSTOM
Reissue
MARSHALL JTM45 Phil Hyland and Michael Ross of Seven Decades explain how they lay their trust in the hands of another to put an early ’69 Black Beauty through its paces ithin the Seven Decades guitar collection sits an e arly ’69 Black Beauty. “I’ve always liked ’68 and early ’69 Black Beauties, and it’s pretty hard to find a clean one,” says Michael. “It’s got a fast, slim neck and it’s a lot of guitar. If you think that Gibson are doing a Collector ’s Choice ’68 reissue for about nine g rand now, it’s about what we paid for that. So we were on the lookout for one, because we had the Goldtop and the ’Burst and we wanted a Black Beauty, but we didn’t want a 50s one – too expensive – and so this one came from Chicago Music Exchange. “Phil saw it on their website, so I called Angelo who runs it and he got the staff there to put it through its paces. He personally saw the deal through. In fact, this is about the only guitar we didn’t play ourselves before we bought it. “The Plexi is a reissue JTM45. We We get through tons of Marshalls, but we haven’t yet gone down the vintage route. We’ve got friends who collect them, but, for me, the reissues do the job – and always with a 2x12 cabinet.”
W
1. “Mick
Ronson
figures heavily in our musical background and he plays a Black Beauty that had been stripped back… We’re not going to take the black finish off it, though!”
2. “It’s
really important to
have a good cabinet, hopefully with original speakers, Greenbacks or whatever,” says Phil.
W o r d s J a m i e D i c k s o n P h o t o g r a p h y J o s e p h B r a n s t o n
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GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
CUSTOMS |
P E T E R
BACK IN BLACK Peter Peter Frampton’s Frampton’s Gibson Les Paul Custom is arguably a rguably more famous fa mous than any other of its kind – and the story of its loss and eventual return reads like a great detective novel…
F
rom his days in Humble Pie to the height of his fame during the …Comes Alive-era, Peter Frampton’s Gibson Les Paul Custom was his constant sonic companion. It was famously lost in a plane crash in 1980, but miraculous miraculously ly reappeared reappeared some some years years later and the two were reunited. The tale of how the ‘Phoenix’ found its way back to its owner is a mix of coincidence and blind luck with twists tw ists and turns aplenty. We’ll We’ll let Peter himself tell the story, so sit back and listen to a slice of guitar history, as well as some remarkable detective work… “The very first time I played played the guitar was in 1970. Humble Pie was performing at the Fillmore West and the gentleman whose guitar it was at the time, Marc Mariana, had been a frien friend d ever ever since since Humb Humble le Pie Pie started started playing the year before in San Francisco. I had just swapped my Gibson ’62 SG for a 335 and every time I turned up for my solo it just fed back back and and this was totally demoralising. So after the second set Marc said, ‘Would you like to try my guitar tomorrow? It’s It’s a Les Paul.’ I sa id, ‘Anything’s better than what what I’ve got.’ So we met at the coffee shop at the hotel where we were staying and it had just come back from Gibson. He’d had it refinished and he opened the case up a nd it looked like a brand-new 1957 black Custom, but it was a 1954 Black Beauty that he had messed with, sanded and
routed for three pickups. There’s this wonderful picture of a ’57 Les Paul Custom on the front cover of a Miracles album [ The The Fabulo Fabulous us Mir Miracl acles es, 1963] and he wanted to make it like that. It’s a slightly smaller body than a regular Les Paul, because he was heavy-handed sanding it. I took it up to my hotel room and started playing it acoustically and it played like a dream. So I tried it for both sets that night and then I tried tried it the next night and the next night… and at the end of the engagement at the Fillmore Fil lmore West, I gave Marc the guitar back and said to him, ‘I know this is a silly question, but do you you think you would ever sell this g uitar?’ uitar?’ and he said, ‘No… I want to give it to you.’ CRASH AND BURN “I had it for 10 years and in 1980 we toured South America. We’d just finished Vene Venezuel zuela, a, Caracas Caracas and had a day day off, off, so so we we flew ahead to Panama, which was our next stop. Rodney, my road manager, came in with this completely white face. I was in the restaurant and he sat down next to me and said, ‘I have some really bad news.’ I said, ‘What?’ and he said, ‘The cargo plane with all the equipment equipment crashed on take-off. People died.’ There were six people onboard: two pilots, a navigator, loading inspectors and I was just devastated, we all were. And t he pilot’s wife was sitting at the bar in t he restaurant waiting for him to come in; she
W o r d s D a v i d M e a d P h o t o g r a p h y R e x I m a g e s / S h u t t e r s t o c k
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F R A M P T O N
GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
1 didn’t know this had happened yet. After I got over the shock of people losing their lives I began to think about the gear. Rodney said, ‘Yeah, it’s all gone.’ It was a fireball. It was totally filled up with fuel and they couldn’t get near it for five hours. It was just like an H-bomb went off. So we sent my guitar tech down a week later and he said, ‘Was anything left?’ and they showed him a couple of Marshall cabinets and he saw the shapes of guitars in guitar cases that were burnt burnt out out – he he saw saw the shape shape of the guitar but no guitar. So he came back and said, ‘It’s all gone.’ So that was it. EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY
“For the next few years it was very hard for me to find a guitar that I liked. My ’55 Strat, Way, also which I used for Show Me The Way went. It’s like a pair of old shoes, you know? It’s horrible when you put that new pair on. When I moved to Nashville in the 90s, Gibson got together with me and for a year we planned on doing a Peter Frampton Les Paul Custom, which is very, very good, and we’ve sold more than a thousand of them now over the last 10 to 12 years. I was playing them on stage and people would come up to me and say, ‘So is that the one?’ and I’d say, ‘No, but it’s close!’ “I got an email one day and I opened it up and there’s a dozen photos of my guitar, the
original Phoenix. I mean, I must have screamed so loud, I couldn’t believe it. It was from someone in Holland who was friends with someone from South America and so we found out what happened. There were about three or four guitars that were not damaged badly at all and someone decided they would be much safer at his house, and then he decided they would be much safer if he sold them to other people! I don’t know what happened. I had a ’63 Precision Bass, I had my ’55 [Strat] and I had a white Les Paul Pepper’ss movie and they that I used in the Sgt Pepper’ were all sold. Whoever owned it sold it to someone who lived on the island of Curaçao, which is about 40 miles off the coast of Caracas. The guy just put it away and didn’t really do anything with it until his son became became a teenage teenager, r, wanted wanted to play music music and had always seen this guitar in terrible shape and said, ‘Dad, is it okay if I take it to someone and get them to make it playable?’ So he said, ‘Yeah, go ahead.’ Wrong! THE GAME’S AFOOT
“So he took it to this part-time luthier… who happened to be a customs inspector at the airport. He opened up the guitar and said, ‘My eyebrows almost went through the ceiling,’ because he knew what it was. So he said, ‘Leave it with me overnight, I’ll see what I can do.’ He called a friend in Holland
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1. Constant
companion:
Frampton with the Phoenix prior to its loss in the crash
2. Frampton’s
association
with the three-pickup Custom reached its apogee on his celebrated Frampton Comes Alive album
of 1976
CUSTOMS |
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P E T E R
F R A M P T O N
GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
“So finally, finally, two years after I’d I’d first seen those pictures, he brought the guitar in the room – it’s it’s not even in a case. I knew before I even opened it that it was mine, it was wonderful” PETER FRAMPTON
and said, ‘You’re never going to believe what I’ve got in my hands.’ So he took photographs of everything – forensically. He took the pickups off, the tuners, he took everything apart so you could virtually see inside the guitar and that’s how I knew it was mine, because I’d been inside that thing so many times. “The following day, the kid came back and the luthier says to him, ‘I have to ask you, do you know what you have here? This guitar was on the plane crash; this is Peter Frampton’s guitar.’ And the kid said, ‘Oh no it’s not,’ and put the guitar in the case and ran off. So 18 months go by and we’ve lost it, but finally this kid needs needs mone money, y, goes back back to to the luthier and says, ‘I’m thinking about selling this guitar, do you want it?’ The luthier was frightened that he could get arrested for receiving stolen goods, so instead of buying it himself, he went to the minister of tourism of Curaçao, who he knew because because he was in the the customs customs departme department, nt, and explained the situation. So the government of Curaçao bought the guitar back back for for me for $5,000. $5,000.”” FRIENDS REUNITED
“They didn’t want to bring it back to me because because the guy was frighten frightened ed of being being arrested. I said, ‘There’s no reason on earth why I would get the FBI or anything.’ But I understood; he was scared. So I said, ‘Look, how about this? Check into this hotel in Nashville, we’ve booked you a room there for three days. We’ll do this one day, have a couple of days to be my guest and sightsee
Frampton’s lyrically melodic guitar style suited the singing voice of the Custom perfectly – and still does
around Nashville.’ So finally, two years after I’d first seen those pictures, he came with the minister of tourism from Curaçao. He brough broughtt the the guitar guitar in the the room room in the shittiest thin plastic cover, it’s not even a case. I knew before I even opened it that it was mine, it was wonderful. Then we all got in our cars and went straight over to Gibson, and Walter Carter, George Gruhn and all the top people from Gibson that do all the custom work were there. We took it apart and they said, ‘This was a ’54 or ’55, more likely a ’54 Black Beauty, which has been rerouted.’ I knew it, but it was nice to hear Gibson say it as well and getting all these hotshot guitar aficionados to sign off on it. “When I got it back from Gibson they hadn’t taken away the scars, they had just made it playable. The pickups were not
90
working, the electronics were not working, so that had to be replaced, unfortunately. But they’ve been replaced with time-sensitive pieces – Patent Applied For pickups first of all, but all the volume [controls] and capacitors are all ‘new old stock’, basically. All these these people people in Nashv Nashville ille just went, went, ‘I know what you need… I’ve got this 1950s capacitor,’ and everybody just donated all this original stuff to go into it, so it’s probably more original now than it ever was! “The community came together and everybody just wanted to have something of theirs in the guitar, which was so nice. Now, I use it on every show – the least I use it on is Do You You Feel Feel [L [Like ike We Do ], but but [you’ [you’ll ll hear hear it on] any of the songs from …Comes Alive. So, basically basically,, it’s it’s better better than it was, except except it’s it’s a little banged up.”
CUSTOMS |
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P E T E R
F R A M P T O N
GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
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CUSTOMS |PAFS
WIRED FOR SOUND Guitarist talks tal ks
to Tim Mills M ills from f rom Bare Knuckle Pickups Pickups about about the magic
of the PAF – the t he ’57 Les Paul Custom’s Custom’s powerhouse – and how he is i s on a mission to capture the sound of an era
I
t’s a misty and da mp day at Bare Knuckle Pickups HQ in Cornwall and we’re talking about that most cherished artefact: the PAF pickup. Sound is a very subjectiv subjective e thing, thing, but but most players players will agree that there is a certain undefinable magic connected to Seth Lover’s mid-50s invention. Originally designed as a means to battle battle troub troubleso lesome me mains hum, with the the PAF, PAF, Seth heralded in a golden era of tone and something that manufacturers everywhere have been battling to reproduce ever since. Few people know more about the goings-on inside a PAF than Bare Knuckle’s Tim Mills and a nd our first question concerns the nuts and bolts of a PAF… Just what are the physical components that constitute that sought-after sound?
“It’s down to the gauge of nickel silver in the basepla baseplate, te, the the material material that you make the pole-keeper from, the material that you make your slugs and pole screws from, the dimensions of the pole screw heads, the type of Alnico magnet, 42 AWG plain enamel coil wire and the tension of the wire on the bobbins, bobbins, the draw draw of the cover cover… … Cruciall Crucially, y, I find that the celluloid butyrate coil-formers are something that are often overlooked. On Seth’s very first prototypes there was no screw coil, just two slug coils. He initially just had a slug coil former tool made and I believe it was people from the sales team who came
back to him him and and said said that that they they needed needed more more to talk about. So he had the idea of putting in a row of adjustable poles so that they could say that you could height-adjust the poles to balance balance the the strings. strings. That facilitated facilitated another another coil-former tool to be made. The chances of the same tool-maker being used are pretty slim, although the job went to the same company, and when you compare a slug coil and a screw coil former in a PAF, PAF, the actual actua l internal dimensions are slightly different, particularly around the island that you wind the wire around. “Externally, there are slight differences, too, but it’s the area that you wind the w ire around that is most important with regards to the tone. Obviously, if you reduce the area of the island on one bobbin compared with the other, those two coils are going to be asymmetrical, so even if you did have the same number of turns of wire on, it’s not going to be a perfect humbucker, because one coil will have a longer piece of wire than the other. We know that they didn’t have the same number of turns on either, so there’s a difference in the actual number of turns and the coil shape.” How variable was the spec of original PAFs then?
“Extremely variable. If you look at the original patent submission that Seth Lover put in, he was stipulating an elongated bar of
permanent magnetic material and a pair of coils wound around formers. The machines that they were initially winding t hem on didn’t have an auto shut-off, so it was down to the operative to stop the machine when the coils looked full. Making a n allowance for a pre-tensioner and the auto-traverse – which the Leesona machine that they were using by the late 50s would have had – you are going to get a fair variance in coils. “Going from original coils I’ve inspected, you’ll you’ll get a variance variance in humbu humbucker ckerss with with a DC reading of maybe mid to upper sevens – 7.5k to 7.9k, right up as high as 8.9k. In real terms, that can be a variance of around 1,000 turns of wire. With the magnets, you don’t actually see Alnico 5 coming in until late 1960. I’ve found Alnico 2, 3 and 4 magnets used, mostly Alnico 2s, but there were some Alnico 3s left left over over from P-90s P-90s and and I suspect suspect it it was little more than whatever the suppliers had and gave them.” So did the PAF change over the time that it was issued?
“Strictly speaking, no – if we’re tal king about the original PAF. It is a ‘Patent Applied For’, which was submitted in 1955 and didn’t get granted until mid-’59, but other than the points I’ve already mentioned, up until late 1960 nothing really changes in terms of design of the actual pickup. Up until that point it was common to find that the screw
Words David Mead Photography J o s e p h B r a n s t o n
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GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
The DC reading of original PAFs could vary enormously from a round 7.5k to 8.9k
coil and slug coil had a totally tota lly different number of turns of wire, which is very much a part of that PAF tone as well as var iance in the type of Aln ico bar magnet. In 196 1961, 1, a short Alnico 5 bar magnet was introduced and then a move to poly-coated poly-coated coil wire. It’s my understanding that around this time they brought brought in auto auto shut-o shut-off ff on on the the winding winding machines and the wi nd becomes a lot more regular. It was pretty much bang on 5,000 turns per coil, which heralded the era of the ‘patent number’ humbuckers.” So the auto- cutoff machines would have destroyed the possibility of those odd, beautiful pickups happening?
“Absolutely, yes. It’s interesting, because the later ‘patent number’ humbuckers kind of got their brightness and their dynamics just by being being lowe lowerr outpu output, t, but but becaus because e you’ve you’ve got got almost almost uniform uniform coils, coils, that that bloom bloom doesn’t happen. It’s quite an aggressive tone, still very dynamic – you dig in and they come up with you – but that thing thi ng where the pickup feels like it’s talking on its own just doesn’t happen.” What are the tonal differences that occur from a disparity in turns between the slug and screw coils?
“I call it ‘coil offsets’ and so if we’ve g ot a disparity between the t wo coils – say, say, the screw coil had 500 turns more than the slug
“We “We had a double black from ’58 – even in our crude test guitar, it didn’t didn’t matter where you put your finger finger on on the the neck… neck… it literall literallyy talked!” talked!” TIM MILLS
coil – then we’re not getting total humcancelling. When something hum-cancels, you lose some some of of the the very very high high freque frequenci ncies es and some of the very low frequencies, so we’re centring predominantly around the midrange, which is very much the character of a humbucker. “Depending on the offset between those screw and slug coils, we’re drifting away from complete hum-cancelling and more highs and lows are coming back in. This is the ‘air’ and a nd ‘bloom’ you’ll you’ll hear referred to in the tone produced by early PAFs.” What’s the most unusual PAF pickup that you’ve ever encountered?
“Probably the one in Jimmy Page’s Number One [Les Paul]. Jimmy sent Number One down here for us to have a look at – he was concerned concerned that the neck pickup might fail. It was thought not to be original to the guitar, but was still an early early PAF and it turned out to
94
be fine. fine. That one, one, when when you played played it, had had the most hollow and woody Strat-like tone I’d ever come across in a neck pickup. When I measured it, it had a DC resistance of 8.97k, I seem to remember, which is extremely hot for a PAF. Normally, that would sound as thick as river mud!” What’s the best example you’ve seen?
“There was a double black that came in and it was absolutely wonderful, wonderful, it was a ’58 from memory. It had no cover on it at all and it had the vestiges of g old plating on the underside of the screws, so I assume it would have come out of a 335 rather than a Les Paul, and that one was wonderful. Even in our crude test guita r, it didn’t matter where you put your finger on the neck, the notes notes just erupted out from underneath. It literally talked! Very much the benchmark in my mind’s ear as to what I’m aiming for in a really dynamic pickup.” pickup.”
CUSTOMS |PAFS
1 5
1
2 Do you think original PAFs really have magic that’s hard to imitate?
“You can reproduce anything if you’re prepared to spend enough time. The problem is to reproduce it consistently, and it takes hard work to get the right results. A lot of PAFs PAFs sound quite something-and-nothing. There are one or two that sound bloody horrible! It’s when you get the really good ones that you think , ‘Crikey, ‘Crikey, that’s what the fuss is about.’ As a pickup builder, that’s what you aim to to do do – capture capture the the magic. magic. “If you were to take one of those holy grail pickups and say, ‘Right, I’m going to recreate that…’, that’s fine, but would that then work for every player? Possibly not. We’ve probably all got a different idea about sonic nirvana. So it’s about trying to find the best elements elements of all the the good good ones ones and that’s that’s what I try to put into the voicings of my PAFs. PAFs. The most important thing is to get the dynamic control in there. If you’ve got a pickup that is flat, then it ’s like somebody talking in a monotone voice voice – it’s not going to flatter anyone’s playing and that will generally happen if you’ve overwound it or have too much tension in the coil. Any overwound pickup goes very, very flat and lifeless, so dynamics and trying to get that bloom bloom in there there are paramount. paramount.””
6
1. A
‘double white’ PAF –
bobbins could be white, black or a mix of both
PAF Anatomy 2. The
nickel silver cover
acted like a Faraday Cage, helping to screen the pickup from RF
1. MAGNET & WINDINGS
headed for. The gold-plated
Despite the original patent
covers therefore meant
stipulating the use of an
gold-plated screws
Alnico 5 bar magnet, Alnico
interference
2, 3 and 4 are the most
4. BASEPLATE
commonly found, with the
Made from 21 AWG nickel
latter being common to
silver with a nickel silver
‘Holy Grail’ variants. The
cover (not shown) that acted
‘magic formula’ for a PAF
like a Faraday Cage for
was (approx!) 5,000 turns of
extra screening against RF
42 AWG plain enamel on each of the two coils; it was
5. BOBBINS
generally either more or less
These are made from celluloid butyrate, an
2. POLARITY
important and often-
The screw coil is south
overlooked feature of a PAF
polarity (ie, at the top of the pickup) and the slug coil,
6. SUPPORT
north – something that
The screw coil is supported
subsequently became a
by a piece of steel, which is
build standard for
drilled so the pole screws
humbuckers
can pass through it before they locate in tapped holes
www.bareknucklepickups.co.uk
95
3. FILLISTER NO 5
in the baseplate.
POLE SCREWS
Underneath the slug coil is
These are either nickel- or
a hand-cut maple spacer,
gold-plated, depending on
secured to the baseplate
which guitar the pickup was
via two brass screws
96
J U N I OR ORS & SPECIALS Gibson had a Les Paul for everyone. The single-pickup Junior, first launched in 1954, 1954, was a slab-bodied, stripped-down si bling to the goldtop Les Paul model that was intended to give beginners their first taste tast e of G ibson solidbody sounds. What it lacked in sophistication, it made up for in woody, evocative tones from a single P-90 pickup – and would later sing like a bird in the hands of legendary players, such as Leslie West, West, Mick Ralphs and G ary Moore Moore.. A twin-picku twin-pickup p variant, the Les Paul Special, launched in 1955, also gave student guitarists an unforgettable schooling in tone…
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JUNIOR HIGH From innocent beginnings as a student guitar, the Les Paul Junior became a raw-toned raw-toned rock ’n’ roll tool par excellence. We reveal how it grew g rew up to become a monster tone machine, among many other things…
A
year or so after after Gibson Gibson introduced introduced its first solidbody electric, the Les Paul Goldtop, the top brass had a meeting. The company’s company’s historian, Julius Bellson, rummaged in the archives and found that, back in 1938, electric guitars made up no more than 10 per cent of Gibson Gibson guitar sales – the rest were all acoustics. He told told the meeting that t he proportion had risen to 15 per cent by 1940, to 50 per cent by 1951, and that now – in 1953 – electric guitars made up 65 per cent of the company’s company’s total g uitar sales. The buoyant Goldtop must have helped considerably in this. Naturally, it didn’t take long for the meeting to agree t hat Gibson would would be foolish not to create more Les Paul models. This was a standard sta ndard way of working: to create a market and, if it took off, diversify with similar products at different dif ferent pricepricepoints. Gibson had been doing similar things since at least 1920, when it had launched the Style L Junior, a budget version of the L-1 acoustic archtop. A Gibson catalogue from 1925 said it offered “to discriminating guitar players, the lowest-priced guitar in the world to combine the truly essential features of a good guitar, guita r,”” adding that the Junior “will give you practically all that is desirable in a Gibson, lacking only some of those refinements, which at present you may feel you cannot cannot afford afford”. ”.
Now, in 1950s America, cheap electrics for starting-out players had begun to appear from brands such as Kay, Danelectro, National and Harmony. Those same companies also supplied cheapies to mail-order companies, companies, who used their own brands, brands, such such as Silverton Silvertone e (Sears, (Sears, Roebuck Roebuck)) and Airline (Montgomery Ward). Gibson had done it with hollowbody electrics, too, but now it was time to try the same idea, making several tiers of price-pointed models, for the new and popular solidbody guitars. Gibson boss Ted McCarty McCarty once once explained explained it: “You “You have all kinds of players who like this and like that. Chevrolet had a whole bunch of models; Ford had a whole bunch of models. So did we.” The first wave of the new Les Pauls came in 1954, with the arrival of t he Custom and Junior. The Custom was the upmarket one, looking classy with its all-black finish and gold-plated hardware. But the one we’re interested in was the budget Junior, which did not pretend to be anything other than a cheaper guitar. It was obvious that Gibson was making it to a price: a pricelist dated September 1954 showed the Custom at $325, the Goldtop at $225, and the Junior at $99.50. The spec told a similar story: the Junior’s shape made it clearly a Les Paul, but its simple, solid mahogany body had a flat top, where the Goldtop had a refined carved
W o r d s E d M i t c h e l l P h o t o g r a p h y J o b y S e s s i o n s
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Go West Former XTC guitarist D ave Gregory, owner of the ’57 Les Paul Junior on this month’s month’s cover, on hunting down the perfect Les Paul Junior tone… “I BECAME INTERESTED IN LES PAUL JUNIORS after
hearing Leslie
West’s solo on Theme For An Imaginary Western : he had this real delicate touch,” explains Dave Gregory, influential New Wave guitarist now active with prog outfit Tin Spirits. “So I had to find out what he was using – it turned out to be a Junior, so I made a mental note that I had to find that sound. Eventually, I bought an SG Junior in 1981: 1981: it was great, but it didn’t do the Leslie West tone.” Dave acquired several earlier-model Juniors, including a ’57 single-cut Les Paul Junior [1], which he traded a wall-hanger Strat to obtain. “When I got it, sure enough there was Leslie, fast asleep in this guitar,” he jokes. Dave later acquired a double-cut ’59 Junior [2] [2].. “It’s like an engine running when you play a big open A chord: it has a roar to it.”
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GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
Keith Richards performing live at the Manchester Belle Vue stadium with his Les Paul Junior
S N R E F D E R / O L L E T S O C N I F ©
Double act The Les Paul Junior inspired many variants, including these two rare 1960s double-cuts… THE ’62 DWIGHT double-cut
[1] is [1] is a
rare relative of the Les Paul Junior. Based on the Epiphone SB533
Felix Pappalardi and Leslie West
Coronet, around 75 Dwight guitars
(right) of Mountain shake the
were built by Gibson for a US
foundations of Crystal Palace in 1971
retailer. Ultra-lightweight, with a single P-90, it’s a stunning offshoot of the Junior design philosophy.
maple cap on a mahogany base. The Junior had one P-90 pickup, at the bridge, and single volume volume and tone tone knobs. knobs. It had a black black pickguard and simple dot-shaped position markers on an unbound rosewood fingerboard. The new Les Paul Junior was finished in Gibson’s traditional two-colour brown-t brown-to-ye o-yellow llow sunburst sunburst and had a wrapover stopbar bridge/tailpiece bridge/tailpiece like the one on the latest Goldtop. All the metalwork was nickel-plated. The straightforward simplicity of the budget budget Les Les Pauls Pauls later later turned turned them them into ideal rock ’n’ roll workhorses. For now, Gibson watched the sales multiply. In 1955, the company shipped 2,839 Juniors, which was more than double the Goldtop and Custom combined combined and the biggest sale of any electric that year, even beating the budget budget hollo hollowbod wbody y ES-12 ES-125. 5. That would would explain the next move – Gibson quickly decided it wanted yet more of this, and in 1955 it launched launched the Les Paul TV and the t he Les Paul Special.
“I remember seeing Steve Marriott
MELLOW YELLOW
The TV was really just a Junior in a different finish, a colour the company referred to as “natural”, “limed oak”, and (most often) “limed mahogany”. In fact, you’ll see TV models from the 50s with varying colours. The earlier ones are a rather dull beige, while later ones are often distinctly yellow. It’s possible possible that ‘TV’ was an unsubtle hint at Fender’s competing blond-coloured guitar: the Telecaster. Or perhaps the name was coined to cash in on g guitarist uitarist Les Paul’s Paul’s television appearances on The Les Paul & Mary Ford Ford Show Show,, a sponsored daily ad for a toothpaste company, for which the couple signed a $2 million th three-year ree-year contract contract in 1953. Gibson probably thought that since you’d you’d seen the man man on on TV, TV, now now you might buy his TV guitar. Later, Later, in the the 70s, 70s, a Gibso Gibson n spokesman seemed to confirm this when he replied to a reader’s enquiry in a g uitar magazine that: “The Les Paul TV model was so named after af ter Les Paul’s personal Listerine show was televised in the 50s”.
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in Humble Pie with a little Dwight,” owner Dave Gregory explains. “I’d never seen one before. I learned later that they were a special order by this guy in St Louis, who had a shop called Sunny [Shields] Music.” The ’61 SG-shape Les Paul Junior [2] is owned by Dave’s Tin Spirits bandmate, Daniel Steinhardt, founder of TheGigRig. “They’re surprisingly versatile,” Daniel says. “I’ve used mine with Marshall Plexis, a Tweed Deluxe, Vox AC30, and it brings something to them all. They’re remarkably full-frequency and resonant: whether you’re just using the guitar to push the amplifier or whether you’re using pedals into a very N O S N E V E T S Y A R / X E R ©
open-sounding amp, Juniors just work.”
“Chevrolet had a whole bunch of models: Ford had a whole bunch of models. So did we” TED MCCARTY
2 1
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Johnny Thunders with his Junior out on the road, 1976
K C O T S R E T T U H S / X E R / N O S N E V E T S Y A R ©
Pocket Rockets Ozzy’s Bark At The Moon guitarist Jake E Lee on why why Juniors cut it as soloing machines “MOST OF THE LEADS [on album
Red Dragon Cartel ] Cartel ] were done with my ’63 SG Junior. It just sounds more explosive than my ’68 SG Standard – it has a little more top end a nd a little more bottom end and just seems to really cut through. More so than a humbucker, although I like humbuckers for rhythms because they have more of a midrange kind of a curve to them, and tend to sit in a track better.”
This was much better than admitting a crack at a competitor. The Special was, in effect, a two-pickup version version of the Junior Junior,, finished finished in a beige beige colour (but not called a TV model – a cause of some confusion since since). ). Naturally enough, tthe he Special required four controls and a pickup selector, selector, but other tha n that and the t he colour, it really was t he same as a two-pickup Junior. Junior. The TV and Special both appeared on a June 1956 pricelist, at $122.50 and $169.50 respectively. By now, the Junior had gone up to $110 (a Goldtop would set you back $235, a Custom $360). Also in 1956, Gibson added a Junior Three-Quarter model, available at the same list price as the reg ular one. It had a shorter neck, giving the guitar a scale length some two inches shorter than the Junior. Junior. Gibson explained in a cata logue that it was designed to appeal to “youngsters, or adults with small hands and fingers”. Nobody famous played the Juniors or TVs or Specials. It seems that, quite simply, simply, they were aimed at beginners… and were
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dutifully bought by beginners. begi nners. No doubt there were a few budding rock ’n’ rollers scattered around here and there who made a great deal of enjoyable noise with them. But for the most part, American youth seems to have followed the Kalamazoo marketing plan, stumbling through three chords on a budget budget Les Les Paul, Paul, and then either either forge forgetting tting about guitars altogether or moving up the tree to a ‘bet ter guitar’ (for which read read ‘more expensive guitar’). It was, after all, the American American way way.. BODY DOUBLE
More change was coming. Sales of the original Les Pauls reached a peak in 1956 and 1957, 1957, with the Junior hitting a then record 3,129 units in 1956. In 1958, Gibson made a big design design change change to to three three Les Pauls: Pauls: the Junior, Junior, Junior Three-Quarter, and a nd TV were revamped with a completely new doublecutaway body shape, otherwise keeping the P-90s and the generally simple vibe. Ted McCarty told this author that the redesign
J U N I O R S & S P E C I A L S | H I S T O R Y
1.
Junior rival: Gretsch’s Corvette was the company’s first solidbody, with a student-focused spec
was a reaction to players’ requests. “They wanted to be able to thumb the sixth st ring,” he said, “but they couldn’t do it if the only cutaway was over on the treble side. So we made those Les Pauls with w ith another cutaway, so they could get up there. We did things that the players wanted, as much as anything.” The Junior’s fresh look was enhanced with a new Cherry Red finish. The TV adopted the new double-cut double-cut design as well, now with t hat rather more yellow-ish finish (Gibson called it “Cream”).
2.
Fender’s twin-pickup Duo-Sonic, launched in ‘56, was a sleeker affair than Gibson’s rival Junior
When the double-cut design was applied to the Special in 1959, the result was not an immediate success because of a design mistake, a rarity for Gibson at the time. The company’s boffins overlooked overlooked the fact that the rout for the neck pickup in the Special’s new body weakened the neck-to-body neck-to-body joint, and many a neck was snapped right off at this point. The error was soon corrected by moving the neck pickup further down into the body, resulting in a st ronger joint. joint. The new double-cut Special was offered in
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3.
Fender’s simpler Musicmaster student guitar debuted in 1956 and was marketed as a “3/4-size” guitar
Cherry or the new TV Yellow. However, and still causing much confusion today, the yellow yellow Special was never never actually actually called a TV model. Proper TV models only ever have one pickup, just like a Junior. Gibson’s November 1959 pricelist showed the double-cut models as follows: Junior or Junior Three-Quarter (Cherry) (Cherry) at $132.50; TV (“Cream”) $132.50; Special (Cherry or “Cream”) $195; $195; Special Three-Quar Three-Quarter ter (Cherry) $195. The Goldtop had morphed into the Sunburst Standard, at $265, while
GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
Mick Ralphs is well known for using a Les Paul Junior in his Bad Company days
The yellow special was never actually called a TV model. Proper Proper TV models models only ever had one pickup pickup,, just just like a junior
the black Custom retained its top-of-the-line position, at $395. The double-cuts double-cuts survived surv ived until 1960 and 1961, when Gibson completely redesigned the line with the new SG shape. Considering Considering all Gibson’s Gibson’s various Les L es Paul models as a whole, sales declined in 1960 after a peak the t he previous year. By 1961, 1961, Gibson had decided on a complete redesign of the line with a new sculpted body shape, in an effort to revive iinterest nterest in its solidbody electrics. At first, Gibson kept the Les Paul name on the new models, but later called them SGs. That means that the early SGs made between 1961 and 1963 are mostly known today as SG/Les Paul models: they have the new SG design, but still sport a ‘ Les Paul’ name on them somewhere. The story of the new model names and the new design is a bit headache-inducing. headache-inducing. The original design of the double-cut TV continued, but late in 1959, it was issued without the ‘Les Paul TV’ headstock logo and was called the SG TV model. The same thing happened to the Special and Special Three-Quarter models, which in late 1959 – also still with w ith the old-style double-cut body – were renamed the SG Special and the SG Special Three-Quarter. The Junior Three-Quarter was discontinued in 1961. In 1961, Gibson applied the new SG-body design to the Les Paul Junior (it was still called that), to the SG TV, to the SG Special, and to the SG Special Three-Quarter.
During 1963, Gibson proceeded to drop the Les Paul name from the redesigned Junior, Junior, and in its catalogues and other ot her promotional promotional material, Gibson gradually renamed it the SG Junior. Junior. The SG Special Three-Quarter Three-Quar ter was discontinued later in 1961. What jolly meetings they must have had at Kalamazoo! JUNIOR GENIUS
Since then, a number of reissues have kept the originals alive, with varying degrees of success, as players discover and rediscover the Junior, TV and Special. Original 50s examples have never been as expensive as other vintage collectables of the period, but
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it’s the raw sound of the P-90s and the responsive playability playability that appeal as much as any financial advantage. Leslie West with Mountain, Mick Ralphs with Mott The Hoople and then Bad Company, Johnny Thunders with The New York Dolls, Mick Jones with The Clash, Steve Jones with the Sex Pistols, and many more since – they’ve all found that rock ’n’ roll heaven can come in the simplest of packages.
For mor moree info info on Gibs Gibson’s on’s most ico iconic nic electric, check out Tony Bacon’s The Les Paul Guitar Book from Backbeat Books.
GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
195 5 GIBSON LES PAUL JUNIOR This pared-down Les Paul is one of only a handful of the model with this natural fin ish ever to leave the factory
ost guitarists have, at some time, asked themselves the pertinent question: is two pickups one too many? “One pickup and two controls is all you need. It’s very rare and an extremely good lead guitar,” says this Les Paul’s owner Samuel Åhdén of Guitars: The Museum. It’s rare, all right: estimates of how many natural-finish Juniors made it out of the factory like this, as opposed to the more common, common, brighter brighter hue that popped popped better on television, range from between five to 20. The Vox is an AC30/6 Twin Top Boost; the model here has a black grille cloth, which superseded the previous brown, and saw the t he previously rear-mounted treble and bass controls for the top boost circuit relocated to the main, now g rey, control panel. In combination with a no-frills rock ’n’ roll roll guitar guita r such as this ’55 LP, it’s a pretty damn raunchy sound.
M
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JUNIORS & SPECIALS |
1959 GIBSON LES PAUL JUNIOR The cut-price bruiser stepped out with a new body in ’58. All hail the Junior double-cut… double-cut…
y the late 50s, Gibson Gibson was enjoying mixed fortunes: sales of its solidbody Les Pauls were dropping off, but the semi-hollow ES-335 had proved an instant smash. The Michigan firm joined the dots, aand nd in 1958, it made an announcement in industry magazine The Gibson Gazette: “Guitarists the world over are familiar with Gibson’s Gibson’s famous series of Les Pauls. They include some of the finest solidbody instruments manufactured today – and lead the field in popularity. It is with pride that Gibson announces exciting improvements…” When the updated Junior was unveiled that same year, it was quite dif ferent from the single-cut bruiser of yore. This ’59 example shows shows off the key spec changes: a body overhauled overhauled with a fresh cherry red finish, plus twin rounded horns that gave a nod to the 335’s iconic ‘Mickey Mouse ears’ and offered an unfettered run along the length of the rosewood fretboard. Whether the punks who favoured the Junior really needed access to the very top frets is debatable, debatable, but at least the post-’58 Junior would have been easier to smash.
B
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1959
GIBSON
LES
PAUL
JUNIOR
GIBSON LES PAUL
H A N D B O O K
MIGHTY NINETY Gibson’s P-90 single-coil pickup gave the Les Paul Junior its girthy tone, suiting it to blues and raucous rock – but the design was born in the jazz era
G
ibson’s P-90 single-coil pickup first appeared after the end of World War II, sometimes with nonadjustable poles, as seen at first on the ES-125. It was developed by Gibson engineer Walt Fuller from his earlier bar (or ‘Charlie ‘Charlie Christian’) Christian’) pickup, pickup, and Gibson originally christened it the PU-90. Despite that early version, the P-90 is best known with screw-top adjustable poles. With ‘dog-ear’ fixing – an ear-shaped lug on
each end of the case – it turned up on some great early hollowbody electrics, such as the ES-350 (launched 1947), the ES-175 (1949), and the Super 400CES (1951). The ES-5, which appeared in 1949, had an impressive line-up, with three P-90s fixed to its top. For the new solidbody Les Paul Goldtop of 1952, the case of the P-90 was adapted to a lug-less ‘soapbar’ ‘soapbar’ shape, with two fixing fixi ng screws among the poles. A few years later, Gibson selected the dog-ear-case P-90s for
Words Tony Bacon
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the Juniors, TVs and Specials. There was no shortage of early greats powering their rock ’n’ roll with P-90-equipped Gibsons, including Chuck Chuck Berry (usually with an an ES-350), Carl Perkins (when he opted for a Les Paul Goldtop), and Scotty Moore (who used a Super 400CES or an ES-295). The P-90 has become a classic both for its raunchy tone and its modest design. It’s about as simple as a pickup can be: 10,000 turns or so of 42 AWG (American Wire
JUNIORS & SPECIALS |
P - 9 0
P I C K U P S
P90-options
A fabled Sprague ‘Bumblebee’ capacitor nestling in Dave Gregory’s ’57 Junior
Gauge) Gauge) enamel-coated magnet wire machine-wrapped machine-wrapped around a single fat, flat bobbin. bobbin. Six threaded threaded steel steel polepi polepieces eces go through the bobbin to make contact with two bar-shape Alnico magnets. Updates, reissues and copies sometimes alter the sound, but an original P-90 has a tone all its own. Sound is personal, but many would characterise that classic P-90 tone as big, big, midrangy midrangy,, and and still still packin packing g some some edge. It’s in a sort of fenced-off sonic territory, border bordered ed by by a Fender Fender single single coil coil on one side side and a Gibson humbucker on the other. Some of those early hollowbody hollowbody electrics turned up in t he hands of jazzers who loved Gibsons, musicians musicians of t he calibre of Joe Pass and Herb Ellis, and they managed to dial back back the the volume volume and get some some warm and woody tone from their P-90-loaded boxes. But the same pickup on one of those guitars is going to sound different if you strap it to a Junior. When it comes down to it, P-90s in that context are rightly associated with raw rock ’n’ roll raunch, and they certainly excel when pushed hard and turned up loud. Gibson introduced the humbucker in 1957, and it seemed to take over from the P-90 as the company’s favoured pickup, although the P-90 stayed put on the budget Les Pauls and other ‘lesser’ models. Seth Lover, who designed Gibson’s humbucker and worked with Walt Fuller, once told me: “That P-90 was a good pickup – except that it wasn’t humbucking. humbucking. That was the only thing t hing I had against it.”
DIMARZIO SOAPBAR £69
BARE KNUCKLE NANTUCKET 90 £77
Available Av ailable in soapbar and dog-ear
UK pickup specialist Bare Knuckle’s
formats, DiMarzio says: “We made a
P-90 range is particularly extensive,
pickup that performs almost
although the Nantucket 90 aims
identically to the old ones, but with a
at that late 50s, higher-powered
combination of ceramic magnets and
sound as employed by Mountain’s
iron loading, instead of Alnico
Leslie West.
magnets”. DiMarzio has numerous
Available Availab le in dog-ear or soapbar
other dual-coil P-90-sized pickups
formats, the bridge unit has a DC
including the P90 Super Distortion,
resistance of 7.9k ohms and uses
Tone Zone P90 and Virtual P90.
Alnico V magnets.
MiRep, 01404 822699
Bare Knuckle, 01326 341313
www.dimarzio.com
www.bareknucklepickups.co.uk
LOLLAR P-90 £72
MONTY’S GUITARS M90 £88
Typically, Jason Lollar offers numerous
The luthier behind Monty’s Guitars is
P-90s – the standard version, again
Matt Gleeson, who we recently came
available in dog-ear or soapbar
across for his pickup design on the
options, comes in at 9.1k ohms in the
new Peerless Retromatic.
bridge position and uses degaussed Alnico V magnets. “It sounds like an old P-90 rather than
“Valve amp plus M90 set equals a very happy chappy,” says Matt of his higher-powered P-90. The precise
a new pickup that still has hard edges.
Alnico magnet isn’t specified, but the
Great for fat clean tone or driving rock
DC resistance is quoted at 8.9k for the
with more grind,” says Lollar.
bridge position.
Charlie Chandler’s Guitar Experience,
Monty’s Guitars, 07921 916053
0208 973 1441 www.lollarguitars.com
www.montysguitars.com
GIBSON P-90 ‘SUPER VINTAGE’
SEYMOUR DUNCAN AN TIQUITY P-90
Approx £75
Dog-Ear £139
Gibson’s only after-market P-90
With an aged cover, this suits the
(alongside the humbucking-sized
upper-level Antiquity range of Seymour
P-94) is available in both soapbar and
Duncan pickups. It uses Dun-Aged
dog-ear formats, mounted in either
Alnico II magnets and the bridge unit
cream or black plastic covers. It’s a
has 8.52k ohm DC resistance.
design that’ll be 70 years old in 2016.
Rosetti, 01376 550033
Gibson www.gibson. www.gibson.com com
www.seymourduncan.com
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THE SG Y E A R S Lacklustre Lacklustr e sales of the Les Pa ul Standard Standard in the late 50s goaded Gibson into a radical redesign of the Les Paul in 1961. Out went the arched maple top and hourglass curves of the original, and in came a devilish doublecut doublecut design that Les Paul him self didn’tt recognise as hi s own. In fact, Les was so on to withdraw didn’ his name from this variant. But, it still went on to have an illustrious illustrio us ca reer under under its own name: the SG or ‘Solid Guitar’
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SOLID GONE! Designed to break Fender’s hold on the early 60s guitar market, Gibson’s rebooted Les Pauls survived spec tweaks, a name change and the ire of Mr Paul himself, to become the brand’s biggest-selling guitars
T
hursday, 7 May 1964 at Chorlton railway station on Wilbraham Road in Manchester. As a Granada TV crew shoot footage for a programme called The Gospel and Blues Train, Train , American American rock ’n’ roll pioneer pioneer Sister Sister Rosetta Tharpe arrives in a horse-drawn carriage, climbs out and turns to face an audience of blues-ob blues-obsessed sessed students students and mods on the opposite platform. Just as the heavens open, she launches into Did into Didn’t n’t It Rain? Rain? pulls off a killer guitar solo then jokes, “Pretty good for a woman, ain’t it?” Tharpe’s incendiary performance – and those of her fellow travellers Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson – lit a fire under the kids who caught the show, some of whom formed blues bands in its wake. Looking back at the footage, what makes it even more notable is Tharpe’s choice of guitar. The good sister was an early adopter of the SG-bodied Gibson Les Paul Custom… From mid-1961 to 1963, the guitars we now know as the Gibson SG Standard and SG Custom were actually labelled as Les Paul models. At the end of that period they were officially renamed as SGs (Solid Guitar). The SG Standard – as cherished by Angus Young Young of AC/DC, AC/DC, Rev Revolv olver er-period -period Beatle George Harrison, Cream-era Eric Clapton (with his psychedelic ‘Fool’ guitar), Robby Krieger of The Doors and Modfather Paul Weller – is Gibson’s biggest-selling solidbody
guitar of all time. Just like the original single-cutaway Les Paul models, the new guitars inspired a couple of more affordable models: the single P-90 SG Junior and the twin P-90 SG Special, the latter used and abused to great effect by Pete Townshend Townshend of The Who. Although they weren’t part of the SG family, the twin-horn body shape was assigned to the entry-level Melody Maker from 1966, the EB-0 and EB-3 bass guita rs, and Jimmy Page’s favourite EDS-1275 doubleneck behemoth. We’re We’re aided and abetted in this pick through the birth of the iconic double-cut double-cut by Paul Tucker of Vintage ’n’ Rare Guitars in Bath, who recently took delivery of the ’61 Les Paul Custom and ’61 and ’62 Les Paul Standards that grace these pages with their awesomeness. First, some SG history 101… BACK TO THE START The rebooted Les Paul Standard and Custom models were launched in 1961 in an effort to save a company in trouble. As crazy as t he situation appears today, sales of your classic single-cutaway Les Paul Standards had flatlined in the late 50s. Gibson desperately desperately needed a winner. It’d already suffered major flops with the Flying V and Explorer models; yes, two guitars that would would eventuall eventually y become become rock icons icons inspi inspired red little more more than a collective shrug from the guitar-buying public of ’58 and ’59.
W o r d s E d M i t c h e l l P h o t o g r a p h y J o b y S e s s i o n s
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“Fender was talking about how Gibson was a bunch of old fuddy-duddies… So I said, ‘Let’s shake ’em up’” TED MCCARTY
affordable machine with a slim neck. The thing looks bloody smart, too, a fact not lost on the kids who caught sight of t he late-50s models sprayed in the same DuPont colour codes detailed on the Cadillac (Dakota Red, Olympic White), DeSoto (Shell Pink) and Mercury (Sherwood Green Metallic) sleds rolling out of Detroit. The message? Custom colour Fenders were not your daddy’s guitar. In fact, Gibson Les Pauls looked more like something granddaddy gra nddaddy would appro approve ve of. McCarty set to work… A WEIGHTY ISSUE
Let’s make no bones about it: Fender owned the electric guitar ma rket in the late 50s and had effectively taken control thanks to this skinny kid with glasses from Lubbock, Texas. It’s impossible to overstate just how important Buddy Holly was to the popularity of the Fender Stratocaster. Holly wasn’t your typical rock ’n’ roll hero. He wasn’t handsome like Elvis Presley, a rebel like Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, or an exceptional exceptional guitarist g uitarist like Chuck Berry. Yet when Holly, and his band The Crickets, Crickets, played played That’ll Be The Day Sue on The Ed Sullivan Show on and Peggy and Peggy Sue on 1 December 1957, there wasn’t a kid in America America who didn’t didn’t want to be be him or want to own a Strat. The same thing happened in the UK when the band’s The “Chirping” Crickets album was released here in 1958. Holly was pictured cradling a Sunburst Strat on the cover and that image changed the lives of British kids such as George Harrison, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Over in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Gibson president president Ted McCarty had a lready assured his place as a design genius when he developed the original Les Paul models, the ES-175, ES-335, the aforementioned Flying V and Explorer, and their infamous lesserspotted sibling, the Moderne. Now, spurred on by some trash talk leaking out of Fullerton, California, he set his sights on building a Fender buster. “Fender was talking about how Gibson was a bunch of old fuddy-duddies,” McCarty Guitar magazine, “and when I told Vintage Guitar magazine, heard that through the grapevine, I was a little peeved. So I said, ‘Let’s shake ’em up.’ I wanted to come up with some guitar shapes that were different from anything else.” First order of business, then – know your enemy. The Stratocaster is a lightweight,
1. An
original control cavity makes
for a more desirable vintage piece as the potentiometer or ‘pot’ codes can be used to narrow down the instrument’s production date
2. Regardless
of the original Deluxe
vibrato’s Art Deco beauty, it was over-engineered, awkward to use, and seldom returned to pitch
1
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To reduce the weight of the existing L es Paul Standard, McCarty stripped it of its maple top, electing instead to design a thinner 1 3/8-inch (35mm) deep mahogany body that looks something like a number eight wearing a pair devil horns. Big misconception number one: it’s not the mahogany that makes a Les Paul Standard or Custom heavy – it’s the maple. And McCarty McCarty bevell bevelled ed his his new new body design’s design’s top and back to cut its bulk and weight still further. He added an ultra-slim neck with fantastic upper fret access, and an unobtrusive body/neck join, plus a pair of PAF (Patent Applied For) humbuckers for the Les Paul Standard, and three th ree PAFs for the top-of-the-line Les Paul Custom. The PAF ’buckers weren’t specifically designed for the new Les Paul/SGs. They were from the same parts bins as those t hose pickups fitted to the earlier ’57-through-’60 ’57-through-’60 Les Pauls with various various magnets magnets (Alnico (Alnico II, III, IV, IV, and and V). V). Between 1957 and ’61, the DC resistance of PAFs ran between 7.5k and 9.5k. The wiring loom on the Standard is your classic three-way bridge humbucker, bridge and neck, and neck solo arrangement. On the Custom, it’s bridge, middle and bridge (with no tone or volume adjustment for the middle pickup), and neck solo. Both models have two volume volume and two tone controls controls.. The SG Standard famously fuelled Eric Clapton’s ‘woman’ tone and Tucker reckons the ’61 Custom at Vintage ‘n’ Rare sounds special, too: “With the bridge pickup selected, turn down the tone and you get an amazing cocked wah sound that works great with fuzz.” At some point point in 1962, 1962, Gibson Gibson switched switched from PAF humbuckers to the ‘Patent Number’ versions. By now, they were pretty much fitted with Alnico V magnets exclusively exclusively and the t he DC resistance hovered around 7.5k. Typically, the crossover was gradual. “One of our ’62 SGs has two PAFs,
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H I S T O R Y
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the other has Patent Number pickups,” says Tucker. “I’ve seen a ’62 with one PAF and one Patent Number pickup.” Other specs were common to the earlier single-cut Les Paul models. For example, the original and SG-bodied Standards shared a rosewood ’board with trapezoid pearl inlays and nickel hardware. The old and new Customs featured an ebony ’board, m-o-p block block inlays and gold hardware. hardware. As you’ you’d d expect, expect, all models came with Gibson’s 24.75-inch scale length. For future SG sponsors such as Angus Young of AC/DC, McCarty had nailed the perfect rock guita r. “I tried a Les Paul when I was a lot younger and because of the weight of the thing it nearly dislocated my hip,” he told Guitar World . “I’ve always found with SGs that if you are a short guy – about 5ft 2in [laughs] – you can get your hands around around them.” them.” The project paid off commercially, too. Gibson sold around 1,700 Les Pauls between 1958 and 1960. In 1961 alone, it shipped 1,662 SG-bodied Les Paul Standards and 513 Les Paul Customs. Add in the 2,151 Juniors, 1,186 Specials and 256 TV models that shifte d that year and it’s fair to say McCarty had earned h is Christmas bonus. Not that everybody was happy. It’s now the stuff of legend that the one guitarist who couldn’t stand the relaunched relaunched Les Paul models was the t he man whose name was all over them. “We’ll never know the real reason why Les Paul rejected the SG,” says Paul Tucker. True, but there are a number of theories. Les Paul, with his wife and musical partner, Mary Ford, Ford, was a huge star in the late 40s and the length of the 50s. By the dawning of the new decade, though, his popularity was waning. One theory is that t hat Gibson didn’t see the point of renewing Les’s contract and was simply using up a consignment of ‘Les Paul model’-embossed truss-rod covers before they pushed him overboard. Another Another more more plausib plausible le theory has it it that that the wily old fox was reluctant to sign a nother contract with Gibson because his wife Mary, who he was in the throes of divorcing, would get a share of t he proceeds. If that’s true, it didn’t stop the couple appearing in ads for the new models. In fact, Ford owned a white SG-bodied Custom for years. It was recently featured on an episode of Las Vegas-based reality show Pawn Pawn Star Stars s. Of course, Les could simply have been miffed that he wasn’t asked to contribute to the redesign. Big misconception misconception number two: his name might m ight be all over the ’52 Les Paul and its noble descendants, but the man himself had virtually virtua lly no input into into its design. He did inspire the g uitar’s creation after approaching Gibson with a suggestion for a solidbody, solidbody, and was asked for his opinion on the prototype as a courtesy, but Ted McCarty always maintained that Paul’s contribution contribution was cursory. In the case of the SG-bodied reboots, Les was left out of the loop completely, once claiming that he’d first eyeballed his new signature models in a shop window. window. “They put out a Les Paul guitar, and it wasn’t with my blessin blessing g at at all,” all,” said said Les in the the 80s. 80s. “They “They put the picku pickup p
LEFT TO RIGHT Vintage
‘n’ Rare Guitars’ jaw-dropping SG
showcase, featuring two Cherry ’62 Les Paul Standards, distinguishable by their ebony-blocked Maestro vibratos; a seriously clean ’61 Les Paul Custom with gold hardware including the notorious Deluxe “sideways” vibrato; and a pair of ‘61 Standards, also fitted with Deluxe tailpieces
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in the wrong place, they made the body too thin, you could pull on the neck and change keys… There were a lot of things w rong with it. So I said, ‘Clean that one up a little bit, will ya, before before you put my name on it?’ So they took my name off it and continued to make it and it’s their number-one-selling solidbody.” Sour grapes or not, Les had a point about the new Les Paul model necks. They were seriously thin with a weak body/neck join. Subsequently, early SG/Les Pauls with repaired headstocks and neck heels are common. According to Paul Tucker, the flimsy body/neck join was not a new problem for Gibson. “On early Les Paul Specials, they routed into the neck tenon to accommodate the neck pickup,” he says. “If you find one of those guitars gu itars that hasn’t had a neck-joint neck-joint repair, it’s rare.” The basic construction wasn’t the only issue. For the ’61 debut, McCarty had spec’d a tune-o-matic bridge and a Deluxe vibrato for the revamped Standard and Custom. Like the now infamous Kauffman vibrato fitted to Rickenbacker Rickenbacker guitars in i n the 50s (including John Lennon’s pre-Beatlemania 325), Gibson’s Deluxe unit was a piece of over-engineered trash. The fact that it didn’t return to pitch was an noying enough, but as its its “sid “sidewa eways” ys” nickname nickname suggests, suggests, you operated operated it by pulling pulling its its arm from side-to-side. By 1962, McCarty addressed the Deluxe vibrato vibrato issue issue,, repl replacin acing g it it with with the much much more reliable Maestro unit. “Most players prefer the Maestro,” says Tucker. “The Deluxe vibrato can feel counter-intuitive counter-intuitive if you’re you’re used to anything anything else.” The The Maestr Maestro o was finished off with a mother-of-pearl mother-of-pearl ebony block block that disg uised the vibrato’s vibrato’s mounting screws. “That was for ’62 only,” comments Tucker. “You’ll never see the ebony block on another year.” Dating a vintage SG is made easier thanks to some if its other components. “The interesting/geeky thing about guitar pots is that they are always a lways stamped with a code,” says Tucker. “On American-made vintage gear, the pots provide an excellent opportunity to date a piece of equipment by referencing their ‘source-date code’. This code can normally be broken down into three main ma in components: components: the manufacturer, and the year and week of manufacture. “On our 1962 Gibson Les Paul, for example,” example,” Tucker adds, “the “t he pot source-date code reads ‘134 6244’. This means the pots were made by CentraLab (134) in 1962 (62) in the first week of November (44). This
Stan Standa darrds are are mor more play playab able le than than the the Cust Custom oms, s, because they’re not Fretless Wonders
“
”
PAUL PAUL TUCKER – VINTAGE ’N’ RARE GUITARS
3. By
can only mean that the guitar g uitar was finished after the pots were made, therefore our guitar must be from very late 1962. It’s another little piece of the puzzle when it comes to accurately dating a vintage guitar.” g uitar.”
1962, Gibson
dropped the Deluxe vibrato, replacing it with the much more usable Maestro unit. For ’62
JOURNEY TO PERFECTION
only, Maestros feature a mother-of-pearl inlaid ebony block
Despite the problems inherent in the ’61 SGs, they are highly prized by collecto collectors. rs. “I think think that’s that’s just a conse consequen quence ce of people people wanting wanting the first edition of something,” comments Tucker. A clean ’61 Custom will happily blow a 10-grand-size hole in your bank balance. Cherry Standards are also rated on lack of neck damage and a bright, unfaded finish. If you’re prepared to take one with a bit more visible mileage on it (what vintage buffs cal l a ‘player’s guitar’), you can get “a killer vintage SG for 30 to 40 per cent less”, says Tucker. “And Standards are more playable than the Customs, because they’re not Fretless Wonders.” The ’61 Custom inherited the infamously low-profile frets of its 50s forerunner, forerunner, the g uitar nicknamed the ‘Fretless Wonder’ Wonder’ and the ‘Black Beauty’. “You’d have thought Les Paul would’ve liked the feel of the Custom,” says Tucker. “He didn’t bend strings much and those necks are very fast.” Les Paul wasn’t the only one who didn’t enjoy the guitar’s performance. Fretless wonders had remarkably low action, but the small frets made bending strings hard work. The result was many players had their Les Paul Customs refretted. As it turned out, the ’61 SGs were a work in progress. Over the next few years, t he design was tweaked to provide a stronger neck/body join. The slim neck a lso gained a few pounds making mak ing it a bit more stable, though Pete Townshend revealed he loved shaking his SG Specials’ necks for lver added vibrato. By 1964, the birth year of George Harrison’s Revo Harrison’s Revolver guitar and Clapton’s ‘Fool’, all the niggles had been ironed out and, according to collectors, the SG was released in its perfect form. Les Paul never did make his peace with the SG. He didn’t have to. The original single-cut Les Paul Standard’s Standard’s pulse blipped back into es Breake Breakers rs life on 22 July 1966, with the release of John Mayall’s Blu Mayall’s Blues with Eric Clapton. Clapton. Thanks to Clapton’s Les Paul and Ma rshall-fuelled tone on the record, and subsequent LP disciples such as Peter Green, Michael Bloomfield Bloomfield and Jimmy Page, the original maple-topped maple-topped single-cut designs returned to production in 1968. Demand for the SG Standard was even stronger and the model has become Gibson’s all-time prime mover. So, on behalf of the blues, pop and punk players who can’t get enough of these brilliant guitars – and, of course, those about to rock – we salute the Gibson SG.
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HEROES A guitar is only as great as t he music that is made with it. In this section, we revisit classic interviews with some of the world’s greatest exponents of Les Paul artistry, to hear their p erspectiv erspective e on using Gi bson’ bson’ss greatest creation to craft milestone tracks from blues and rock history – their sound echoing from the streets of Paradise City to to the corridors of Hotel California ... ...
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GARY MOORE February 201 2016 marked the fifth anniversary of Gary Moore’s Moore’s deat h and in this tribute, tribute, we hear from the man himself in a previously previously unpublished interview interview that was originally car ried out back in 1995, 995, prior to the release of the album ‘Blues For Greeny’, Gary’s blues salute to his mentor and friend, Peter Green
G
uitarist deputy uitarist deputy editor David Mead remembers remembers the circumstances under which the interview was carried out. “Gary’s management contacted me and asked me if I would write the For or Greeny Greeny liner notes for the Blue the Bluess F album and, of course, I immediately said, ‘Yes.’ I had interviewed Gary in the past and we subsequently subsequently enjoyed a sort of nodding acquaintance and so we arranged to meet for lunch in a hotel in London’s Holland Park in order to discuss my contribution to the album cover. On the day, Gary was very relaxed – it was far from being a formal interview, more like a conversation. He said that he wanted the liner notes to be autobiographical autobiographical and tell t he story of his love for Peter Green’s playing that had started way back when Peter replaced Eric Clapton in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. “As it turned out, there wasn’t an enormous amount of space on the album cover and so very l ittle of our exchange that day ended up being used. But I had let the cassette tape roll and we ended up talking for ages, the subject matter veering veering away away from Gary’s historical historical recollecti recollections ons to his his overview of the state of the guita r world in the mid-1990s. mid-1990s. As such, such, I belie believe ve it it repre represen sents ts a fascinating fascinating snapsho snapshott in time of a legendary player, who was rediscovering his enthusiasm for a purer form of the blues. We begin when Gary was just 14 years old, seeing Peter Green play in a Belfast club…”
Words David Mead Portrait Jesse Wild
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e first time I saw Peter Green play was at the Club Rado, which was a very rough club in Belfast,” says Gary, “and at that time ti me he’d just replace replaced d Eric Eric in the Bluesbreakers. I’d gone up there to sort of hang out and see if I could meet this guy Peter Green – I’d read about him and everything. everythi ng. They were were really miserable. They were pissed about the equipment that had been rented for them and nobody was saying anything. I was sitting down beside John Mayall and I tried to sound really cool, I said, ‘Is Greeny here yet?’ and he said, said, ‘No…’ ‘No…’ and I just just blushed blushed;; my my face was burning, I can remember that well. “Peter had a rented Selmer amplifier. In those days, Selmer amplifiers were not regarded as being very cool, but he ca me on and plugged straight into this a mp, played played the first lick of All Your Love and just devastated everybody – he had the most incredible tone. I’d never heard anyone reach down that deep with their tone and really make the thing resonate and I was just blown Anotherr Kind Kind Of away. He did The Stumble, Anothe Love and all those things from A Hard Hard Road Road . “The next time I saw him play was in the very early days of Fleetwood Fleetwood Mac with Jeremy Spencer, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie McVie and himself. That was the band and, again, it was the same club. He came out on stage this time – he had a smaller amplifier, Selmer again – and a nd he played amazingly. He was such a charismatic player, much larger than life when he play played, ed, pulling all this stuff out. You didn’t know where it was coming from. It was so soulful and so beautiful – t hat sound . It was just so clean, and don’t forget, in those days, they didn’t mic instruments up. That was the sound coming off the stage, but so beautifu beautifully lly balanced. balanced.”” After that, Gary moved moved to Dubl Dublin in and and joined joined the the fable fabled d Skid Skid Row. Row. Still Still only only 15 years old, he soon caught up with Peter once again. “I saw Fleetwood Mac play yet again a nd, by this time, time, they they had had Danny Kirwan in the the Albatross oss and Man Of band and had hits with Albatr The World . Peter was using Orange amps a nd playing a bit differently – a little bit more distorted, a little bit more sustain. He had this great g reat big Orange reverb unit as well. Albatross oss and all the stuff and They did Albatr absolutely blew me away. It was the first time I’d heard two guitars play in harmony. That was a big thing as well, because up until then
Albatross oss and I’d figured I’d been listening to Albatr out how to play the second verse by bending two strings at once. At the time, I could bend them in harmony. I thought that’s what he was doing. I thought, ‘That’s so clever, but it’s really hard to do it, it’s so controlled.’ But, of course, when they came on stage t hey suddenly split into stereo and I went, ‘Oh fucking hell, they’re both playing it!’ “The following year they came to the National Stadium in Dublin. I was still only 16 and we opened for them. This guy Pat Egan, he was compering the show, came up to me after our set and said, ‘Peter Green wants to meet you.’ I was totally blown away. I’d always wanted wanted to meet him and I was really nervous. Peter came out of his dressing room and said, ‘I really like li ke your playing, come back to the hotel and let’s have a talk.’ We just jammed for hours and I left really, really late. After that, he spoke to his manager, Clifford Davis, and persuaded him to help get us to England. He signed us into a management contract contract and got involved with the record deal and everything from thereon. We moved to London – this was 1970, I guess – and one day, I went round Peter’s house and he said, ‘Let’s go for a drive’. We were driving along and he said, ‘I’m leaving the band, band, I’ve I’ve had enough. enough.’” ’” Thus began Peter Green’s welldocumented descent descent into virtual vir tual obscurity, but the frien friendshi dship p between between the two two playe players rs had left an indelible mark on Gary. “An amazing player. I just wish he’d never stopped, because he was very much one of the people from that era who had something to say. Then you had Eric and Jeff, Jimmy and Peter and not much else, in my eyes, anyway. There There were other guitarist guitaristss from that era who were very highly rated, but t hey didn’t have anything compared to someone like Peter. So when he left the scene, he took a big part of that whole thing with him, as far as I’m concerned. There’s a whole dimension that’s been missing from British guitar playing since then. It was approached from avery British Brit ish point of view, even though thoug h he was emulating BB King, Freddie King, people like that, but he did it his own way and he kind of made that his own: his own voice, voice, which which is the hardes hardestt thing thing to do, really. really. “There were other guitarists, obviously – after that you had Mick Taylor and everything – but Peter had the toughest job: to walk in after t hat Blues Breakers Breakers album and to shine the way he did was an ama zing achievement and he got a lot of respect for that. When you listen to Peter’s playing – the
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“Playing the blues involves a lot more than people realise – you’re constantly refining, taking away all the stuff you don’t need until all that’s left is the bare bones and what’s there is totally necessary, and that’s the hardest way to play” GARY MOORE
K C O T S R E T T U H S X E R / G A L L I S C E R D N A ©
kind of sound that he went for – it wasn’t in any way fashionable. It wasn’t such a radical departure as Eric’s sound. Eric used a lot more distortion. Peter’s sound has not dated, it’s become a classic in its own right and today, when you listen to it, it’s still as valid as ever. And it teaches people. I think if young guitarists could listen to that, they would learn so much about where they’re going wrong – because he’s the opposite end of the scale to what’s going on today.” Gary had very strong opinions about guitar’s direction in t he mid-1990s. “A lot of people are going so wrong by analysing music too much and learning from a totally different perspective from the way I learned. I just learned by listening to people. People I learned from learned by listening to people. The generation above me was Eric and Jeff and all those guys, so there wasn’t anything like the information that is available today. today. These guitar institutes and things like that, they take away people’s people’s identity and they’re encouraging a lot of people to play who are not naturally good players anyway, but they’re telling people that anyone can learn to play. And anyone can probably learn to play, but that doesn’t make them a good player. At the end of the day, they’re turning out a generic generation of guitarists who are coming out the other end of this sort of conveyor belt sounding pretty much the same. I can’t name one of these people who amount to anything special. Who’s actually become a voice? Who’s Who’s had anything anyt hing of any real depth to say? Who’s written good music? To listen to these guys talk, you’d you’d think they t hey were the most amazing musicians on Earth and you hear what they come up with and it just doesn’t follow through. In fact, they do k ind of play like they talk: they talk too much and they play too much. They just kind of miss the point. It’s not their fault. You’re just overloaded: overloaded: ‘How shall I learn? Which guita r should I play? Which pedal should I use?’ Everyone’s bombarding you.” In the years leading up to our interview, there had been an obsession with speed,
with technique appearing to obliterate content in some cases. “It’s going away a bit, but I’m probably not the right person to ask – I was as guilty of that as anybody, in the 70s, playing all that fusion stuff. But that ’s why I can see it now; I’ve been through that. I can see a lot of these young young guys are going nowher nowhere e with with that that whole attitude. They’re more interested in impressing each other than playing music. We’re losing the whole point: music is not to impress people, music has to stand up on its own and guitar solos are nothing to do with it. If you hear a great song with a really g reat guitar solo, that’s a nice embellishment. embellishment. But they’re just so into the athletic side, the competitive side, and they’re missing the point. But that’s fine, because at least there’s room for people who do want to play music.” Gary was also aware of the influence his return to t he blues was having on players. Still Got Got The Blues Blues, you had “When I made Still all these guys who’d never heard of blues going out to promote blues albums – these LA guys. It was quite laughable. From my point of view, it was a complete turnaround because because there I was, was, setting setting a trend trend and influencing the wrong people to play the wrong music for them. It was arrogant for me to think I could go and a nd make a blues album as simply as that; I hadn’t played that music professionally for so long. It was very successful, but the way I did it was totally wrong: ‘Oh, I’m a rock guitarist and I can play the blues…’ and these guys followed suit and they were even furt her removed from it because because they had no backgroun background d of of the the blues blues.. At least I’d I’d grown grown up with it. I knew knew something about it, but these guys were like widdly-widdly playing that Albert King stuff. “For me, making this record was like going back and relearning everythi ng I’d forgotten over the years. I did a blues album in 1990, but this was going back to where I started. It’s given me a chance to get back to that point and not fuck it up this time. In many ways, I did fuck it up, musically speaking. I went off on a tangent and got too far away from the whole truth of what we
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were trying to do. This record sounds like Still Got Got The Blues Blues the rehearsals for what Still became. became. That’s how how we played played together together and it’s nice to be able to get that sound down on record. It’s given me another chance, really. After Hours Hours and Still Still “People will say, ‘No, After Got The Blues were blues albums,’ but they weren’t really. They were still rock albums because because of the sound sound and the produ production ction.. “This, to me, is my first real blues album because because it’s it’s a blues blues record: record: it’s it’s stripp stripped ed right right down, it’s gone back to what the blues is about for me. I’m not trying to be anybody that I’m not. It’s been like a revision course for me. And this music is so fucking hard to play and people don’t don’t realise; they think they t hey have to just pick up a guitar and play three chords and that’s the blues. It’s a lot more than people realise – constantly refining, taking away all the stuff st uff you don’t need until all that’s left is the bare bones and totally necessary, and that’s the hardest way to play. “It’s very honest. You’re almost in the room. You can hear there’s lots of mistakes – really fucking sloppy playing for me, especially on a couple of tracks, but I didn’t want to change it. I didn’t want to drop things in and fix it, I wanted people to hear it the way it was done. It’s a lot more honest to do that. Anybody can fix things in the studio, but if you can you get a performanc performance e out out in in one go, that means something. All the records I like have got mistakes in them.” At the end of our convers conversatio ation, n, Gary hinted there might be some unreleased material, which, some 20 years later, later, still hasn’t seen the light of day. “I also did a sort of unplugged version of about eight songs as well, a whole load of acoustic versions for B-sides and stuff. We Need Your Your Love So Bad acoustically and did Need The World Keeps Turning from from the first Fleetwood Mac album. It was the first acoustic one Peter did. So I’ve got a load of stuff. It’s very different from anything I’ve done before, it’s much more a vocal performance. So we just banged about eight different songs out in a couple of hours and I’ve got all those at home.”
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JIMMY PAGE Page’s autobiography autobiography is a lab our of love that charts his musical journey th rough rough more than 600 photographs, photographs, including many from his private archive. Here, in an exclusive new interview, one of rock guitar’s true giants talks about the instruments that shaped his early path from teenage pretender pretender to star of the London session scene, scene, Yardbird and beyond…
J
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immy Page is sitting in a London hotel talking about the book that tells the story of his musical life. He leafs through the copy that’s on the table in front of us and points to one of the many photographs. In this picture, he’s about 20 years old, frozen in black and white while recording one of the innumerable innumerable studio sessions he took part in back back in the 1960s 1960s.. “Do you know what’s really interesting?” he says. “There’s all these pictures in here of me in the studio doing sessions with various people, and yet when it comes to Led Zeppelin, the only time that we’re in the studio being photographed is across the second album. Isn’t that interesting? So, pro rata, there’s more of me at those studio sessions, when you wouldn’t think there’d be anything. anything. I just just find it ironic. ironic. But it was interesting, sieving for gold…”
Words Tony Bacon
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“When it came to the time of Led Zeppelin, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Exactly what material. There was an audience if I got a good band together. I didn’t just get a good band, I had a phenomenon” JIMMY PAGE
The 70-year-old Page looks dapper today – dressed all in black, silver-haired – in a wafer-thin, ageing gracefully rock star kind of way. He’s very enthusiastic about his book, very proud, proud, and he’s he’s intrigued intrigued by the idea that its procession of pictures can also tell the story of his guitar life. “That’s what we’ve got to do,” he says with a grin as he t urns more pages and reveals the sequence from Grazioso to Les Paul to Telecaster. Telecaster. “We’ve got to try and explain what it is and why it is.” The early material in Jimmy’s book is especially interesting. There are some fascinating connections and links during the decisive years from the period in which he acquires his first guitars, through the studio sessions, and onto The Yardbirds and the first months of Led Zeppelin. Page turns to a picture of himself playing live with Neil Christian & The Crusaders, supporting Cliff Richard, which was probably taken in 1960. He’s got his
Grazioso electric and he’s on his knees with it at the front of the stage. “The interesting thing here,” he says, “is that my body language is exactly the same as something from 1977 in the white poppy suit, pictured later in the book. And we had a superb drummer in that band, a drum major in the army. He had a load of swing, he loved all the big-bands. Look at the size of that bass drum! So, I got used to big bass dru ms before hearing John Bonham – someone else who had an amazing swing swi ng to his playing.”
probably 1959, and that’s the first one, the Grazioso. It looked and felt like an electric guitar, even though it wasn’t a Fender. In fact, it had a tremolo arm on it, and I’ve got recordings of me playing playing on this thing, t hing, but you’d think this arm would would break, break, actually. actually. I heard somebody, a sort-of record collector, he told me, ‘You’ve got to hear this Carl Perkins stuff’ – and it’s terrific guita r playing, he’s a real stylist.”
There’s a lovely picture in the book of you as a teenager in front of someone’s fireplace with a Grazioso or Futurama…
“Oh, this is a result of seeing and drooling over Gene Vincent & His Blue Caps, by the time they’re doing Hot doing Hot Rod Gang [1958 [1958 movie] and they’ve got all those Fenders. It was oh… my… God. I’ve seen Bruce Welch talk about when he saw t he Fender with Buddy Holly on The ‘Chirping’ Crickets album, and he describes it exactly the same way as I felt, too, which is: that thi ng looks like it’s from outer space! What is it?! So,
“Isn’t that great? That’s the first electric guitar I got. The one before it, a Hofner, Hofner, my dad bought, but… maybe he was psychic, and he knew what was coming. Because there was a whole procession of guitars that ca me into my life over the next few years. I’m either 14 or 15 in that picture, it’s 1958, or
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Were you thinking, ‘Actually, I really want an American guitar’?
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you find out, and then you see them, and they’ve been sprayed in almost hot-rod colours, and they’re all matching. It just looked so damn sexy! The Fenders were sexy to begin with, just beautiful, sculptural designs. Then when you saw a whole nest of them, with the bass and the guita rs and Gene Vincent Vincent standing standing there, there, well…” well…”
“Yes, and also I introduced my semi-acoustic Danelectro into the world of sessions. The first session was when Glyn Johns put me in the Jet Harris & Tony Meehan thing, Diamonds, but I was really young then, it was way before that. Later, I was at ar t college and I was playing in the interval band in t he Marquee, when the Marquee was on Oxford Street, and somebody there said, ‘Do you want to play on a record?’ I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’ So, I went along and took my DeArmond [tone and volume] volume] pedal and a nd all the rest.” Did you have to read?
Custom Shopping JIMMY SAYS HE BOUGHT his
black Les Paul Custom in a London music shop in the early 60s. Was it the famous Selmer
There’s a picture with you posing with your Les Paul Custom and some Selmer and Fender amps…
shop? No, he says, there was
“None of it was mine apart from the Les Paul Custom – and I’m wearing clothes from John Stephen in Carnaby Street. A nyway, I went in this shop, and they asked me to do a photograph with all the amps they were promoting. I guess I must have had enough of a reputation for them to want to take a picture of me with their amps, even though I was just a studio musician. I was doing both, art colle college ge and and sessio sessions.” ns.”
Charing Cross Road. “It’s called
There weren’t many Les Pauls in Britain at that point in t ime, were there?
“No, there weren’t. It was just such a gorgeous-looking gorgeous-looking thing. It just sounded so wonderful. The middle setting wasn’t what you’d you’d expect expect it to be, be, it it was was a spiky sound sound that that was really superb. It’s the one that got stolen later, later, and eventually Gibson said to me, ‘What sort of guitar shall we make you?’ And I said, ‘I know exactly what guita r: we’re going to do a Custom so you can get all the pickup combinations.’ I played it at the O2, and it sounded bloody marvellous. Everyone was saying that guitar sounded the best of anything that night.”
P A GE
You used the Custom on many sessions in the 60s…
What was the first American guitar you got your hands on?
“I did get a Strat along the way. But guitars in those days, t hey weren’t all user-friendly, user-friendly, you know? Just because it was a Strat, didn’t mean to say it was like a Strat we know now. Then it goes from that to one of those orange Chet Atkins Gretsches, and then prett y much from there through to the Les Paul Custom. Might Get Get “In [2008 documentary film] It film] It Might Loud , that was nothing to do with me whatsoever where they’ve got [the caption] ‘Jimmy Page’s Page’s first electric guitar ’ and they show a picture of a Strat. I don’t know whose Strat it is. The reality of it is that Grazioso was the first electric g guitar. uitar. Here I am with these guys, but up in Liverpool, there’s pictures of George Harrison playing one, too. So, that guitar wa s as good as you were going to get around that point of time.”
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Selmer, and then there was an affiliated shop further along Rock Stop now, but it was something else back then. I bought the Custom there, when it was called something else.” Two brothers ran Selmer, Ben and Lew Davis: Ben had the Selmer shop and Lew Davis had a shop in his own name. “You’ve got it, Lew Davis: that was it,” Jimmy says. “Selmer probably had too many Gibsons to put on show at the time, and they sent one down there. I remember going in and there was a sort of cash desk, and the guys behind it, and right up on the wall was this Custom. I said, ‘Oh my God, let me try that!’ It was, oh, this is just… I fell in love with the bloody thing.”
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“At one point, they came along and gave me a piece of music, and it had dots on it. Just a little bit. And I thought, ‘Uh-oh. This obviously means either we’re going to kick you out, or you better bloody bloody well learn to read music a bit sharpish, because we’ve got things which are more demanding of you.’ I’d be playing playing on film scores, scores, on televisio television n adverts, on folk sessions, I’d be playing middle-of-the-road middle-of-the-road music, playing with groups, I’d be playing with singers that were from groups where they’d substituted group members with session musicians. I’d have people coming in from France, from America, America, right across across the board, board, all kinds. kinds. And now I’ve got the hint: hint: you better learn to read music! So, I sort of did, I got to read music. In the early days, there were some sympathetic arrangers who would actually give you your part first, so you’d have a chance. But I’ve got to tell you – reading the sort of fluent notes, that was all right, but when it was chords written, it was, ‘Oh my God, why don’t they just write down the chord names?’ That was testing. “And here’s the key to it. I’d played so many different styles of guita r, I’d played played fingerstyle on my Harmony acoustic, and I’d played blues, and I knew how to play rock – I knew where the roots of these things came from. Also, I learnt to be able to ask a lot of questions, to the engineers, about certain things that I’d heard. I’d play things to people, say, ‘What’s that? How’s that done?’ It was an apprenticeship, and I became so accepted behind that closed door. I’m experimenting with the bow, too, although I’m not doing anything on pop records with that. I’m doing all of this, all my friends are off having a great ti me, and I’m faced with fucking muzak. And it’s like, ‘Okay, this is it, this is the moment, it’s time to go.’ Everyone’s
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“That Les Paul was a beauty. It wanted a new home, so I took it home. I had it right through to the O2, and that’s unusual. Most Most peopl peoplee have have other guitars they’ll play play, but but no matter matter what, it’s the same Les Paul Paul”” JIMMY PAGE
passionate about musi musicc and guitar gu itar playing. Anyway, Anyway, Jeff Jeff had said it would would be great if we we both played played in The The Yardb Yardbirds irds together. together. That was what he said, and I said I didn’t thin k it was going to be possible, because there was this union, five Yardbirds Yardbirds – five live Yardbir Yardbirds ds – and it didn’t didn’t seem seem that that that that was going to be six, to have even more guitars.” You did end up joining The Yardbirds, but you started out on bass…
“Yes, because Paul Samwell-Smith Samwell-Smith left t he band and they had dates to do. do. I’ll tell you what, that was a hard g ig, doesn’t matter if I’d done sessions or whatever: I’m playing bass and trying to to fill fill Paul Paul Samwell-S Samwell-Smith’ mith’ss shoes, and that was tough. But the idea was that Chris [Dreja] would take over the bass and Jeff and I would play guitars g uitars together, so we did stuff where I do a bit of bowing, doing Down in stuff like Over Under Sideways Down in harmony guitars. It was just fun. It was really good and promising. There wasn’t anything like that, t hat, not what we were doing or were planning.” There are some pictures of you playing Jeff’s Sunburst Les Paul…
been really really kind, kind, and and you you think: thanks thanks so so much, but I really want to be on my way. I just had so much that I wanted to do.” You joined The Yardbirds, and Jeff Beck had his Sunburst Les Paul, so you got his Telecaster...
“He came round one day in a brand-new [Corvette] Stingray and gave me that guitar. It’s the Yardbirds guitar, but I wanted to make it my own, and that was when I painted it. That’s the only area that tells you the boy went to art college, the only thi ng that illustrates that, the fact he painted his Telecaster. Telecaster. Well [laughs], it wasn’t a wasted opportunity, then, was it?” What was your musical relationship like with Jeff?
“It was really good, great. I don’t know how old he says we were when we met, I think he reduces the years to almost al most 11. His memory’s bloody bloody good, I’ll tell you that much. much. You You know that by his gu itar playing: he’s got a photographic memory. I met Jeff when we both had homemad homemade e guitars, guitars, so so we we go back back that far, when we’re seeing who’s got the Babe by James Burton. closest version of My of My Babe by Just two kids really enthusiastic and
“I had no choice, I had to take over on guitar if he walked off. What else are you going to do? Walk Walk off with him? It was usually because because the amplifi amplifiers ers were were playin playing g up, up, or something. All in all, knowing Jeff’s sort of technique and his precision, I can understand it, but at the time it was, ‘Oh my God, he’s being really temperamental temperamental here.’ But he was in the whole world of what he was trying to do, and shaping his sound. So, I’ve got to play the stuff t hat’s been done before, before, but I’m really keen to move move it into other areas and put my own stamp on it. “The stuff that I did sort of collides with singles that have to be done, and you try to put the stuff that you’re really doing on the It, Puzzles Puzzles,, the bow, it’s B-sides – Think About It, all coming in. You have no idea how quickly ttle Games album Games album was recorded. ‘Right, the Li the Little red light’s on, take, next…’ because [producer] [producer] Mickie Most didn’t like albums, he only liked singles. When it came to the time of Led Zeppelin, that’s how I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Exactly how I was going to go about it, exactly what material. There was an audience for it, if I got a good band together. And I didn’t just get a good band, I had a phenomenon together. It was really exciting! Imagine! But when people talk about Zeppelin as musicians… everyone dreams of being in a band like that.
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“I really wanted The Yardbirds Yardbirds to continue, I really believed in it… we’d done some recording in the studio, we’d also done a live thing, none of it actually was supposed to come out – I don’t know what sort of leaked out on bootleg – but I had an idea, I had material to be done. They wanted to try something else, they didn’t want to be The Yardbir Yardbirds ds any any more, more, so that’s that’s it. I know know what what I’m doing, I’ve had this period now coming out of the studio, really studio-disciplined; I know how to do things and a nd I know how to approach approach the next stage, certainly certai nly in my life, and how it relates to America.” So, you took the Telecaster with you into Zeppelin, and that lasted for the first-album period, before you got your own Sunburst Les Paul…
“Absolutely, the first album is done on the Telecaster, because it is a transition from The Yardbir Yardbirds ds to to Led Zeppelin. Zeppelin. It’s It’s not not until until 1969 1969 that I get the Les Paul, when Joe W Walsh alsh insists on me it. He bloody insisted, he said, ‘You’ve got to buy this guita r!’ I said I didn’t necessarily need it. ‘No, you’ve got to have it, just try it, you’ll you’ll want want it.’ I said, said, ‘I’ve already already got the Custom.’ ‘No, no, you’ve got to try it!’ I knew it was a good guitar. “I knew there wouldn’t be the feedback, the squealing you got from the Telecaster – every night there was a whole episode of controlling that. Everybody had that, if they started turning tu rning up a Telecaster loud, loud, you know? So, I did buy it and I kicked off the second album with it. It was wa s a pro rata price, he wasn’t stealing me up, and a nd he wasn’t giving it to me a s a present. “It’s the intervention intervention of the guitar again. My first one was left behind at a house we moved into. Then there’s the energy-charged guitar in i n The Yardbirds Yardbirds that Jeff Beck had. Then Joe Walsh Walsh insists I buy this g uitar. That Les Paul was a beauty. It wanted a new home, so I took it home. I had it right through to the O2 [2007], and that’s unusual. Most people have got other guitars guita rs they’ll play, but no matter what, it’s the same Les Paul. It’s hypothetical, but I may not have come up Love on the with the riff from Whole Lotta Love on Telecaster. That fat sound on the Les Paul, you’re you’re inspired. inspired. Well, Well, I am, and I know know other other people are inspired by the sound of particular instr uments. Suddenly, Suddenly, they’re playing something they haven’t played before, before, and it’s really user-fri user-friendl endly, y, and they’ve got some sort of riff, which is peculiar to that moment. So many things start singing, you know? Really singing.”
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SLASH Slash wrote some of rock’s g reatest-ever reatest-ever songs, i ndulged in mythical levels of excess and experienced almost religious heights heights of global adulation. His timeless chops a nd evocative tones powered Guns N’ Roses, Slash’s Snakepit and Velvet Revolver, not to mention cameos alongside the biggest names in music. music. These days he’s clean, sober and has bounced back with t wo hard-hitting solo albums. Here, Here, he talks us through the writing and recording of his latest release, release, his devotion devotion to the G ibson Les Paul and why digital just is n’t right right for him…
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here are few guitarists more famous than Slash and, as word reaches us that a sleek, blacke blacked-ou d-outt car has pulled up outside Guitarist’s London photo studio, a ripple of anticipatory excitement excitement goes g oes around our usually celeb-hardened team. He strides onto our set and plugs his #1 Gibson Appetite Les Paul into a Marshall AFD half-s half-stack. tack. He’s He’s forgiva forgivably bly aloof, aloof, but but not not in an unfriendly way, and is resplendent in full iconic regalia: black t-shirt strewn with obscenities, leather strides, mirror shades
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“It’s embarrassing to tell you how much time I spent evaluating my rig! With Guns N’ Roses, in the early days it was whatever we could get together. In a stadiu stadium, m, you’ you’ve go gott more more gear gear, but but you don’ don’t nece necessa ssarily rily need it…” it…” SLASH
and the obligatory topper that we’re satisfied to note travels in its own hat box. After the critical critical acclaim acclaim of of 201 2010’s 0’s Slash Slash album – recorded with a roster of vocalists that included Lemmy, Wolfmother’s Andrew Stockdale and Fergie from The Black Eyed Peas – Slash quickly got back on the horse to record his second solo offering, Apocalyptic offering, Apocalyptic Love, Love, which was initially released via an exclusive fan pack and then worldwide a few weeks later. This time, he’s stuck with a single singer, Alter Bridge vocalist Myles Kennedy, Kennedy, and during dur ing our exclusive playback, we were struck by the depth of t he sound, the massive riffs and kinetic solos. Back in the studio for the cover shoot, Slash tweaks the amp’s EQ and gain ga in levels, before before letting letting rip rip with with a piece piece of of feroci ferocious ous lead guitar, then, as the camera crew gives the thumbs up, simply says, “If it’s fine with you, it’s fine with me” – and that’s that’s that. that. As you’ you’d d expect, expect, he oozes rock ’n’ roll attitude, yet is softly spoken, engagingly intelligent and perfectly coherent. As we sit down to chat, he fixes us with the first of several affable glances and says: “I have to remember that we’re talking guitars g uitars now, not anything else.” Yeah, Yeah, we get that t hat a lot… Could you explain more about how you wrote the new album?
“The majority of the material material was written during the [2011] tour, over a period of about a year. I’d come come up with an idea, record it, send it to Myles, and we’d just compile loose demos. When the tour was over I got together with [bassist] Todd Kerns and [drummer] Brent Brent Fitz to start thrashing th rashing out the band arrangements of the songs. “Myles was out with Alter Bridge, so when he got done, we started preproduction. We went went into the studio in December and recorded three songs – then came back in January and finished the other 12 tracks.”
Myles my ideas, he’d come up with a melody and that would kick the song off. Sometimes, the ideas would be in one part, or two parts, or a whole arrangement and it was totally open to him to come up with what he wanted. Him being a guitar player, too, he would have his own take on it. It was very collabor collaborative. ative.”” The vocal style is very different to that of Alter Bridge. Is this in any way challenging for Myles?
“Because of the energy of the type of band it is – a sort of loose rock ’n’ roll band – he has to get up to speed naturally, whereas in Alter Bridge it’s a very calculated band with a lot of different [musical] changes. They know exactly what they’re doing, so he has more time to sit down and settle on the melodies, make sure they’re right. I just sort of let him do it loosely.” How easy is it sharing Myles with Alter Bridge?
“We sort of work it out, between Alter Bridge’s manager and my manager. When I first asked Myles to do the tour he was on a break from Alter Bridge, so we toured for a little bit, then he went back to Alter Bridge, then when he was done doing that… the poor guy hasn’t had a fucking wink of sleep in three years [laughs]. But we just co-exist that way. “For this particular tour, he’s on a break, as Creed are going going out out and Mark Tremonti is doing a solo record, so I g et Myles for a year. And when the year ’s up we’ll see where the schedules are at. In a way, it’s sorta cool. The bands are so different, so it’s easy for us to co-exist, but there’s also a sense of looseness where he’s not stressing out about this as a career move: we’re just jamming.”
How did you develop the songs further?
The guitar sound on Apocalyptic Love is is really massive. Is it true it was an all-analogue recording?
“There was a very fixed way, because of all the touring and t he crazy schedules. I’d send
“Yeah, the last record, too. Y’know, for pop or for hip-hop, digital’s fine, but if you’re
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trying to mic a drum set or to get a proper sound out of a cabinet, analogue just sounds better. better. I have nothing against digital, digital, it’s it’s convenient and it’s very fast, but when it comes to this… [it ’s not right]. “The other thing was that we recorded everything live. This is the first record I’ve done since we devised a system where I could play in the room with the guys. In fact, it was actually in a room within the room, so I could hear the playback through monitors and didn’t have to use headphones. All the guitar tracks, all the leads and rhythms are all at the same time and I didn’t have to go in a nd overdub. “I’ve always felt that the sound of headphones, and that confined feeling, has meant I play pretty poorly. I’ve always wanted to be able to play with the band and keep the tracks, and this is the first time in my career that I’ve been able to do it. Normally, if you wanted to do that, different producers would go on to complain about the bleed from the cabinets no matter how far away they were, so this is a system that actually worked. “It’s so different, to capture the spontaneity of a performance and the sort of chemistry that happens when everybody’s working off of one another: it’s like night and day. There are some mistakes and some sloppy things, but, to me, it just sounds more real.” Have you ever recorded digitally – if so what was the outcome?
“I did in Velvet Revolver; I had a shocking thing happen during the first Velvet Revolver record [Contraband, 2004]. The way I always record is live with the drums, and I thought we’d gotten really great performances. Everything was fine, but I came in one night during the mixing process and found the engineer tweaking everything on Pro Tools. I was like, ‘ Why would you do that?’ It just takes all the life out of the record. That was my first real digital experience and I’ve been really wary of it ever since.”
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The album’s guitar sounds are really varied, on Halo and and We Will Roam, Roam, for example…
“It’s all Les Paul – one guitar t hroughout the whole record. record. The thing th ing is, sometimes you want a certain sound and you go get t hat guitar. You want it to sound like a Strat, so you get a Strat; Strat; you you want want it to sound sound like a Gretsch, you get a Gretsch. But t here’s something very unsatisfying about that. I’ve learned over the years that whatever it is I’m trying to do, I’ll do it with the guitar I have. So, for the most part, it’s really just one guitar and one combination of amps, and I just changed a couple of things around to make it sound how we wanted.”
bigger bigger plac places, es, we we managed managed to get get more more gear. gear. Yet Yet the the thing thing is, is, in a stadium stadium you’ve you’ve got got more more gear, but you don’t necessarily need it; you take the gear you’re using in an arena, a nd in a club for that matter, and augment it ever so slightly with a couple more cabs.” Generally, how does playing massive Generally, mas sive stadiums differ from gigging in the smaller venues?
“You just do your thing. We play a lot of festivals and, between clubs, arenas and the festivals, it’s all basically the sa me kind of performance. Sometimes there’s a little more wild abandon depending on the size of the stage.”
The main riff on We Will Roam is Roam is pretty unusual. Can you tell us more about it?
Do you use much in the way of effects on stage?
“That’s something I wrote on baritone guitar and it’s one of the few songs I wrote and recorded at home with a drum machine and all that stuff. st uff. I had a very fixed idea of what I wanted it to sound like and it’s all fingerpicking, except for the chorus.”
“There might be something on a record that had something particular I’d used, so I try to have a foot pedal to do that for the live performance, a vibrato v ibrato or chorus. My go-to for concerts concerts is the wah peda l and I have a Dunlop MXR boost pedal for solos. That’s really it, but I have an MXR Blue Box [an octave fuzz] that I like to have there for one particular section of a song. And then there’s a chorus for the Paradise City. City. But I’m really beginning beginning of of Paradise bad with pedals. I can’t can’t even have them on the stage, so I have my tech switch them on when I need them. They don’t get used that much.”
How about amplification for the sessions?
“I tried mixing a few together. I have a Slash signature model – the new Marshall AFD head – and an old JCM800 of mine that I used on the last record, and I combined the two. Marshall also g ave me one of Kerry King’s signature amps [the 2203KK head – Ed] and there was this multi-channel amp that Santiago Alvarez from Marshall designed and sent to me to try. They were all interesting in their own right, but I found that my amps and my setup was the best: the AFD into into a 4 x 12 cabin cabinet et with with Shure Shure SM57s. SM57s.””
For Nothing To Say you you use a Les Paul with a vibrato. What is it?
“The head’s great. We spent a lot of time developing it, so I had it on the road, then back back to Santiago’ Santiago’ss office office in Hong Hong Kong, Kong, then back out again and, finally, got it to where it was right. Now it sounds amazing, but I think for the next next tour tour,, I’ll I’ll take take a new JCM800 2203 head and hook them up. ite all I don’t want it to sound like Appet like Appetite all the time!”
“I used a Les Paul Axcess for a second, and it’s okay. I’m not a huge supporter of Les Pauls with tremolos, but there’s also that whole thing where I’d rather use a Les Paul than something else. There are certain songs that I used the bar on in t he studio that I want to recreate live; I used to have a BC Rich that I used all the time, but it never sounded sounded that great to me, so I used the Les Paul Axcess for a while. But it’s too thin a guitar guita r compared to my my regular Les Pauls, so they took one of the Appetite models and put a Floyd Rose on it, and it actually works pretty well.”
Do you spend much time refining your live setup?
Are you still able to go out and see bands these days?
“It’s embarrassing to tell you how much time I spent evaluating my rig! With Guns N’ Roses, in the early days it was whatever we could get together, so it’d be some sort of fu ll stack. Then when we started moving into
“You know, I don’t go out and see bands live that much because I’m usually working, and I’m very single-minded when I’m touring or in the studio. It does happen, though – a friend might tell me about something – but
Talking of the AFD, you’ve toured with it a lot – how’s it been?
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most new bands I see are when we’re touring with them, or we’re playing a festival.” Have there been any guitarists who have caught your ear recently?
“The guitar player who really stuns me is Synyster Gates [Avenged Sevenfold], who’s a technically amazing player. I did a gig with them and I worked with [vocalist] M Shadows on my last record. “There’s a lot of shredding going on right now, but not much that’s in the vein of guitar that t hat I’m into. I played with Derek Trucks recently, and he’s phenomenal, but he’s a little bit too far over towards the blues side, too mellow. mellow. And the other g uys are just too much shred, so I haven’t been hearing many what you’d call straight-up rock ’n’ roll guitar players.” players.” Talking of Derek, what was it like playing with him and BB King?
“Oh, that was an awesome experience. I’d I’d played with BB before, but to play with h im at [the] Royal Albert Hall was a great moment for me.” How does your playing technique compare to what it was like when you were starting out?
“Over time, I’ve developed a rapport with the guitar. It’s really about connecting your brain to your fretboard as quickly as possible so anything you hear you can achieve instantaneously. A lot of the stuf f you’re doing when you’re a kid, you don’t really know what you’re doing, which has a certain charm to it.” Everyone wants to be a rock star, but how does the reality compare to the dream?
“When I was a kid just picking up the guitar, I used to play air guitar to Cheap Trick at Budokan, so there’s that fantasy: the concerts, the masses of people. That was pretty much it – the only ambition I had was to get out and do concerts. As soon as I started playing, the first thing I did was put a band together and that’s always been my focus. The whole rock star thing – the fame, limos, chicks, hotels, all that stuf f – wasn’t part of my consciousness. consciousness. “So, when it came to be, it was always about the actual concerts, concerts, and it’s it ’s probably probably exactly how I thought it would be playing in front of masses of people. The rest of it was just never never that that glamor glamorous ous to me – and and we we used to spend a lot of time dousing it with booze!” booze!” [laughs]. [laughs].
HEROES |SLASH
“I’ve “I’ve always felt that the sound of headphones, and that confined feeling, means I play pretty poorly poorly.. Reco Recordi rding ng live captures the spontaneity of a performance and the chemistry that happens…” SLASH
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DON FELDER As guitarist with the Eagles during the stratospheric success of their 1970s golden era, Don Felder fretted some of the most sea ringly memorable memorable licks in rock – a nd co -wrote -wrote a little song called Guitarist about about
Hotel California along along
the way. He talks to
how the song was born, his difficult break
with the b and, and a painstak ingly recreated recreated replica of the Les Paul he played on that solo…
F K C O T S R E T T U H S / X E R / H C N U P A I D E M / T N E K ©
or a guitarist who has performed in one of the biggest biggest-sellin selling g bands bands of all time, Don Felder has maintained a pretty low-key presence in the world of rock. Born and raised in Gainesville, Florida, he spent teenage years jamming with Stephen Stills and later played played guitar in in Crosby & Nash’s touring band – he even taught a young Tom Petty how to play. But a personal introduction to the Eagles, set up by hometown friend Bernie Leadon – then a member of the group – led to the biggest break of Felder’ Felder’ss career career,, when when he was invited invited to join the band in 1974. As Felder admits in Heaven n And And Hell: Hell: his frank autobiography, autobiography, Heave My Life Life In The Eagles Eagles, being in the band was sometimes a rough ride, as the pressures of hit-making, clashing egos and the excesses of the road all took their toll on tempers and relationships. relationships. Yet through it all, the group
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“And Don Henley said it would be a great idea to write this song about the concept of California, the excesses of Hollywood and all that stuff… stuf f…”” DON FELDER
was able to make some of the most sublimely memorable songs in the country-rock canon Hotel – including their biggest hit of all, Hotel California: a six-and-a-half-minute rock epic as cool as the desert breeze that retains its darkly delirious power today. Although he departed from the group in 2001 amid acrimony over his status in the t he band – since settled – Felder remains proud of his work with the Eagles. He took time ti me out to tell Guitarist how the West was won… The acoustic intro to Hotel California is recognisable almost from the first chord. How did you write it?
“I had rented a house on the beach in Malibu that summer and we were writing songs for Hotel what was going to become the Hotel California album and we’d just come off One Of These Nights, which was a very successful record for us. But we were under the gun to come up with a lot of ideas, so I had put together a reel of say 16 or 17 song sketches – in this little reel-to-reel four-track TEAC tape recorder in my back bedroom. And I was sitting on the couch on a July day – in cut-off shorts, a t-shirt and flip-flops – playing guitar and just goofing a round in this rented beach house in Malibu. “I looked out at the California sunshi ne sparkling on the Pacific Ocean and my t wo little kids were playing in the sand on a swing-set out in front of me, and I just started playing those chords – that introductory progression. I just played it over and over. And I thought, I have to go record some of this before I forget it. “And so I ran into my back bedroom and turned on the TEAC and played about five times through t he chord progression, progression, then turned it off and went out to join my kids. A few few days days later later,, I was looking looking through through this reel of songs I was going to submit to the rest of the band and I thought, I like that, I’m going to finish it. I had a Rhythm Ace drum machine, which was kind of the early stages [of drum machine technology] – I laid down a track on that, put bass on it and tried to envision what Joe Walsh and I could do.
“This was the first album with Joe and I where we could do some harmony guitar stuff and trade off solos, and I wanted to write something that would have some interesting guitar stuff on it. So I pretty much overdubbed overdubbed everything t hat you hear on the record now on this litt le four-track studio, except for a couple of Walsh licks at the end.” What was the next step?
“I did a quick mix of it, put it on a cassette with the other 16 songs, gave a copy of it to everybody in the band and said, ‘If anybody’s interested in writing or finishing one of these songs for the record, let me know’. I gave a copy to Randy [Meisner], to Joe and to Don Henley. Then, a few days later, I got a call from Henley and he said, ‘I kinda like the one that sounds like a Mexican reggae song – that kind of Spanish thing’ – and I knew which track he was talking about instantly. We started talking about it, a nd Don and Glenn kind of came up with the idea…” What was the inspiration for the song’s lyrical theme?
“We’d talked about the fact that nobody from the band was from f rom California. We’d We’d all driven into California at night and, on the horizon, you could could see the lights of Los Angeles Angeles from from about about 100 100 miles miles away as you’ you’re re approaching approaching for the first time. And you have all these images that are in your mind: palm trees and movie stars and success and Hollywood Boulevard – all those images of California. And Henley said that would be a great idea to write this song about the concept concept of California, the excesses of Hollywood and all that stuff. So he and Glenn [Frey] took the track and ran off and started scribbling away on pads and came up with what I think are some just great lyrics.” How did the initial studio sessions for Hotel California go? go?
“We got in the studio to record the whole track in E minor… with the exception of the solos, you know, the basic track. And then
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Don went out to sing some of his lyrics on amicrophone, but he sounded kind of like Barry Gibb in that really high falsetto [laughs], because the key was too high. So I went and sat in the studio and dropped it into D minor, then it went to C minor and then I went, ‘Okay, how about A minor?’ And he said, said, ‘Nope, ‘Nope, that’s that’s too low’. low’. So So we we wound up having to re-record the track in B minor, which is not a really fun key to play guitar in. I mean, we can do it, but it’s just not everybody’s favourite key.” key.” Did you and Joe Walsh knock ideas about freely during those sessions?
“Yeah, we did. We were in the studio in Miami to record the guitar solos, the harmony parts and all that stuff. I’d left the cassette demo, which I’d made about a year before before that, in Malibu. Malibu. I though thoughtt we’d we’d just set up and plug in, and I’d play a lick and Joe would play a lick – knock it back and forth. But Henley stopped us when we started doing that and said, ‘That’s not like the demo; that’s not right. You have to play it like you did on the demo’. And I said, ‘I don’t remember what I played on the demo – that was over a year ago’. So I picked up the phone and had to call my housekeeper in Malibu, and tell her where the cassette was. She put it in one of those lit tle Panasonic blasters, played it and held the phone up to it. We were recording recording in Miami, and a nd I had to sit down and learn what I’d just made up on the spot a year before. But your first thoughts are quite often your best.” One reason why Hotel California’s solo solo is so memorable is because of your incredible feel for phrasing. Where does that come from?
“My father had a big collection of horn-band music that I grew up listening to: Count Basie, Glenn Miller and Lawrence Welk, he played a lot of horn music. If you listen to the way a sax or a trumpet player phrases, they have to stop and take a breath – you just can’t play a constant non-stop barrage of notes. They choose their notes very carefully and
K C O T S R E T T U H S / X E R / O T O H P S K C A R T R A T S ©
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“The first time I remember being overwhelmed at the magnitude of what had happened to us was when we played in Wembley Stadium” DON FELDER
phrase their melodies in a human amount of time where they stop, take a breath and then play another phrase. So if you listen to the solo on One Of These Nights it’s really like something a sax would play. play. Also, Those Shoes Shoes sounds like two trumpets. They’re melodic in the sense that it’s like something a horn player would play. That’s kind of where it came from.” The tone on the solo is really sweet – was that straight off the amp?
“Yeah, I still have that amp: a mp: it was a Fender Tweed Deluxe. I think at that point it was probably probably the largest amp I’d used in the studio. On the new record that I’m working on I’m using some slightly larger amps, but not much. There was nothing plugged into it, no echoes or fuzzes – it was just that ’59 Les Paul plugged in with one cable to a Tweed Deluxe and turned up to where it kind of sang without being overly distorted.”
Were there strong creative tensions in the studio – did it affect the recording?
“A lot of the creative part happened outside of the studio; I mean most of my writing took place in my little home studio. I wrote 16 or 17 tracks and two of them wound up on the record: one was Victim Of Love and [the Hotel Califo California rnia. When we got in other] was Hotel the studio, we prett y much recorded them almost exactly as I had written t hem – except for a few things on the very end and the slide solo on Victim. “Henley would sneak sneak off with casset tes and fill up legal pads full of ly rics and then come and sing, and it was like, ‘Wow, that’s fantastic’. And so a lot of the creative stuff took place outside of that space. “The tension was about what songs were gonna be on the record – there was also some tension about people people being really ta rdy to sessions because they wouldn’t show up until 2.30 or 3pm. So it was just human irritations
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more than tensions about creative stuff. But there were a few times, such as when we finally finished the record and we were having a playback party for the record company. They’d been pounding on our door for months and we said, ‘You’ll get it when it’s done’. done’. So we finally fi nally invited them over and put up the two-track with all the mixes and I think the last song on the thing, at the time, Hotel Califo California rnia. Henley turned around was Hotel and said, ‘That’s our first single’. And I went, ‘God, I think that ’s wrong: that’s the wrong format for radio – it’s six minutes long, you can’t dance to it and it stops in the middle. We need to put out something similar to One Of These Nights , which is geared to radio – under three minutes a nd 30 seconds’. seconds’. He said, ‘No, that’s it’. I’ve never been proven so wonderfully wrong [laughs]. There were times when we disagreed about decisions and stuff but, you know, he was right [about that].”
V K C O S R E T T U H S / X E R / E N I H S N U S / L E Z A M ©
You must have played Hotel California hundreds of times live. What is your strongest memory of touring it?
“The first time I remember being being overwhelmed at the magnitude of what had happened to us as a result of that song, and that album, was when we played in Wembley Stadium. I think there were 100,000-plus people there. The field was filled up and there were multiple tiers that kind of cantilevered out. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed the delay in sound, where if you see somebody hit a baseball you always hear it after they strike the ball, because sound travels at a slower speed than light? Well, I remember seeing people jump up and down while Joe and I were playing the solos at the end. The people standing closest to the speakers would come down and then 10-15 [rows beyond them] people would come down just a split second later, making a wave of this cantilevered wing or arm of seating. It was impressive.” How do you feel about your departure from the band today – has time granted you any closure?
“You know, know, the closest ana logy I can draw to that situation is that it’s much like going through a really bad, ugly divorce. And at one time you shared a wonderful experience with those people and you did some wonderful things together. I went through a divorce with my wife of 29 years, which was happening at the same time as my departure from the Eagles [but] we’re still great friends. We call each other; we talk together; we’ve got kids and g randkids together. We have shared a really large part of our lives. I wish I had that kind of relationship with those people who were in the Eagles with me. They seem to have kind of shut t heir impenetrable impenetrable steel wall as far a s my ability to communicate with them or in any way carry carr y on a relationship is concerned. Why? I don’t know – you would think I’d murdered their parents or something [laughs]. I hadn’t done anything really like that. But that’s just who they are and the way they deal with things. I regret that they are that way and they’re not more accessible. Whether we can work together or can’t work together there’s no reason to harbour that hostility and anger that they have. And I wish wi sh them well – I’m having a great time, playing a lot of music, out of that stress machine and making some new music in the studio and having a great time, so I don’t particularly miss it.”
Summer Of ’59 THE SEARING TONE OF DON FELDER’S
“What the Gibson Custom Shop is
’59 LES PAUL is part of the magic of Hotel
making is as good, if not better, than the
California – – its thick voice was the
old guitars – because some of them
perfect foil for Joe Walsh’s Telecaster
have little quirks that you don’t want to
lines during what is, arguably, the most
mess with. That ’59 of mine frets out way
famous extended solo in rock music.
up high on the B-string, and I don’t want
Felder says he bought it from a
anybody to try to dress the frets or try to
travelling dealer famous for his superb
fix that. But the new one doesn’t [have
stable of vintage guitars. “His name was
those quirks] and it’s brilliant. I used it
Tony Dukes,” he recalls, “and every time
on this last record instead of my original
we’d go through Texas, Tony would show up. He was a horse trader and he
– its sound has got a lot more fire i n it.” Felder also had the chance to make
always had something in his truck you
a request when he visited Gibson to
wanted. He would show up in a station
discuss the ‘Hotel California’ Les Paul.
wagon or a truck that was full of Les
“I went to the Custom Shop before
Pauls, Teles and Strats, and I bought
they started making it and I said, How
probably 20 pieces from him over the
do you put all the scratches on [aged
years. It must have been about 1974 or
Custom replicas]? And they opened a
something, right after our first big hit,
drawer and took out this rhinestone
One Of These Nights , when I started
belt-buckle that said ‘Elvis’ on it. I said,
making money. He came round and I
‘You have to use that on my guitar
think I bought three or four pieces from
– Elvis was the first person I s aw on
him: the Les Paul, a Tele, a Strat and
television when I was 10 years old and
some other stuff.”
he inspired me to start playing!’ So I told
The Les Paul was the guitar Felder played on Hotel California and he still has it today. Now, Gibson has faithfully recreated it in the Don Felder ‘Hotel California’ Les Paul, which is being made in three grades, ranging from the least expensive VOS model, to a more pricey aged version and, at the top of the heap, a signed-and-aged model. At the same time, Gibson also recreated Felder’s twin-neck EDS-1275 that he used for live renditions of the song. “They did a remarkable job of replicating those guitars,” Felder says.
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’em, ‘You have to use it, and they did! They’ve really been fantastic.”
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