Posted on 10/05/2011 12:25:15 PM PDT by bk1000
Not sure of the rules with this source, so I'm posting the headline and link only.
http://www.gibson.com/Files/aaFeaturesImages/fool%20pic.jpgBeautiful Fool!
In the early 1990s, tied to the production and release of the documentary video Fresh Live Cream, Gibson had a contest in which the winner got a '61 Les Paul SG reissue, even though Eric Clapton's was a 1964. In fact, Clapton used to call the guitar a Les Paul---it may have been one of the last of the Les Paul SGs bearing the brand when Les Paul pulled his name from it because he hated the design.
This clip, in which Eric Clapton plays the Fool SG, was included in Fresh Live Cream . . .
Rick Nielsen played a five-necked Hamer, too. Me? I’d rather have a Jimmy Page twin-neck Gibson SG.
Although people most often think of Pete Townshend with a Les Paul, he frequently played a SG. He liked the long, flexible neck (is there a guitar with more playable neck than an SG?). Townshend would pull back or push forward on the neck to bend notes rather than using a tremelo or his finger on the fretboard.
To me, respectfully, saying one guitar is best is like saying hammers, screwdrivers, drills, and socket wrenches don't hold a candle to hacksaws. They're tools - artistic, beautiful tools. But each has a purpose and a specialty. And God love 'em all.I used to think that way. When I was young and foolish and thinking nothing of my own musical voice and guitars as nothing but tools. But guitars are not mere tools (though many of their players might be!).
When you wish to find your own musical voice, when you wish to stop chasing everyone else's tones, stop with such nonsense as "how can you play so-and-so sound with such-and-such guitar," and decide to be yourself on the instrument, that's when the guitar that does it the most and the best for you will introduce herself to you. Just as the Les Paul finally introduced herself to me.
I don't want to sound like anybody but me. Whether I'm playing one of my own blues songs (I've written a small bunch with more to come) or playing from the blues repertoire that goes deeper than the usual safe-cliche junk that every actual or alleged blues band on the circuit plays, I want to sound like me. The originators already sounded like themselves and I can't sound like them. I know it. The best day of my musical life was the day I decided it was pointless to chase everyone else's tone because I couldn't be any or everyone else. And I've never looked back.
And what about such sacred cows (c'mon, you and I both know people have them and ride them for all they're worth, alas) as "you can't play so-and-so's song except in so-and-so's way and on so-and-so's instrument"? (Would you believe I once got bawled out for playing Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Crossfire"---I really love that song, and it doesn't get played anywhere near as often as the beaten-to-death-and-back "Cold Shot" or "Pride and Joy"---on a Les Paul and in a style that threw down the hard funk through the blues, as in how dare I even think about playing Stevie Ray Vaughan in any way other than the Stevie Ray Vaughan way, on the Stevie Ray Vaughan instrument, even while I was getting a nice ovation for playing it my way, my tone, on my instrument?)
Well, to me, a sacred cow is worth one thing---steak.
Although people most often think of Pete Townshend with a Les Paul, he frequently played a SG.He played an SG Special between 1968 and 1970, particularly at Woodstock and at the Isle of Wight. (It was at the Isle of Wight where his cherry-red SG Special finally gave out on him and cracked apart completely, by the way.) He was playing it in the summer of 1969 when I saw the Who share a bill with Jefferson Airplane at a concert my summer camp took us to see; it was a kind of Woodstock warm-up for those two bands.
I have to confess it was their opening act that impressed me most. Two notes out of B.B. King and I didn't want to know the rest of the show, and I was a huge fan of the Who. That show plus the end-of-summer release of Completely Well and "The Thrill is Gone" made me want to play a guitar seriously at last.
IIRC, Clapton’s Fool guitar was sold to Todd Rundgren, wasn’t it?
hogwash. my strat is the most beautiful of all. ;)
I think you can only get the doubleneck SG through the Custom Shop. Or if you’re cash-challenged, you can get the Epiphone model.
However, SRV is Strat and vice versa and in my book, that is the only endorsement that matters.
...When you're playing on stage, and you lean back but the volume is so loud you can't fall over, that's a hard drug to kick.Gawd that inspires me.
And there are some kinds of music I don't want to hear played on a Strat. I don't think I want to see a jazz guy playing one.
But.
Well, Larry’s almost synonymous with the ES-335. And I seem to recall reading somewhere that Clapton’s first electric guitar was a 335, which he still owns.
Alex Lifeson used an ES-355SV for most of the ‘70s.
And let’s not forget Alvin Lee.
I may have to rent the Woodstock video again.
Yes, but not by Clapton. And it's not really certain that Todd Rundgren legally owned the guitar when he owned it, or that the seller had a right to sell it to Rundgren.
The Fool wasn't a very playable guitar. It was painted by brush and the back of the neck was rough. Paint would fleck on the neck as Clapton played. One day, he left it at George Harrison's house. Depending on who you believe he either "never came back for it" and George Harrison loaned it to Jackie Lomax, or George Harrison loaned it to Jackie Lomax "before Clapton came back for it." (And we can read in all the Patti Harison stuff we want.) Lomax was signed with Apple and Harrison knew Lomax needed a guitar.
But Clapton never gave the guitar to Jackie Lomax. It came from Harrison.
Rundgren saw Lomax playing it in 1971 and talked with Lomax about it. A year later, Lomax offered to sell it to Rundgren for $500, with the option to buy it back.
Rundgren had the guitar restored.
Then, in 2000, Rundgren sold it at Sotheby's at silent auction for $150,000. That purchaser turned around and sold it for $500,000.
I've heard a few rumors that Clapton wanted the guitar back and never thought that Lomax or Rundgren had a right to it - and that was back 40 years ago.
I have no idea what Jackie Lomax thinks about Rundgren selling it or whether Lomax declined to buy it back.
The story's in the link I posted above, with the photo of the guitar as restored - all except the "Clapton wanted it back" part. I've heard that from a number of somewhat reliable sources.
Gibson's sold a Den Felder "Hotel California" doubleneck model for at least the last two years.
conspicuously absent from that list of "also Gibson players" is SRV.There was a reason for it: Gibsons weren't his main guitars. He played a Les Paul once in a blue moon, he did indeed pose with an ES-335 on the cover of Soul to Soul, but his number one choice was a Stratocaster. Likewise with Jimi Hendrix, for that matter---his number one guitar choice was a Stratocaster even though he'd play that Flying V or a Les Paul once in a blue moon.
If you like that sort of thing . . . see my earlier comment on sig models . . .
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