Guitar circuit tricks, and first gig survival
Check out my latest for Gibson.com – Down To The Wire: Guitar Circuit Tricks
Also check out my First Gig Survival Guide. And feel free to laugh at the pic of 10-year-old me on that one.
INTERVIEW: Ace Frehley
It’s the Les Paul that launched a million guitarists: the 1974 Cherry Sunburst three-pickup Gibson Les Paul used by Ace Frehley during KISS’s breakthrough era. The guitar, known as the Budokan Les Paul in honour of the historic Japanese venue where it was given one of its best-known public showings, left Ace’s stewardship a few years ago, and it was long since retired from the road. But now it’s back, in spirit at least, in the form of Gibson Custom’s new Ace Frehley “Budokan” Les Paul Custom. This limited edition instrument will be available in four versions: fifty signed guitars aged by Tom Murphy in the Gibson Custom Shop; one hundred aged (but not signed) pieces; a further 150 finished with Gibson’s VOS (Vintage Original Spec) process; and 1000 pieces of an Epiphone version which retains most of the design features of its Gibson big brother. Ace took some time to talk with I Heart Guitar about the new guitar, the 30+ year old classic it’s based on, and his future plans.
“It was my favourite guitar that I used pretty much exclusively through the 70s and 80s, I guess,” Frehley says of the original instrument. “I continued to use it even with Frehley’s Comet. I don’t even remember when I got it! It was some time around 1975, 76. I had three or four backups, but the particular one that they just released, which is called the Budokan guitar, it was always my favourite guitar, my number one. It just felt the best and played the best.”
Mary Ford’s Gibson Les Paul on eBay
Wow, how’s this for a piece of music history? The actual 1961 Gibson Les Paul (before this shape was renamed the SG) owned and played by Mary Ford, Les Paul’s wife. This guitar was recently featured on the History Channel’s Pawn Stars program. The back of the guitar still has the remains of an old setlist taped to it. The buyer will also get Mary’s guitar strap, the original hard shell case, photos of Les and Mary, personal letters including correspondence with personal assistants, doctors, record companies etc, and even – get this a letter where Les Paul is told not to sign a contract with Gibson.
If you’d like to take home this piece of music history, the Buy It Now price is a cool $250,000.
My latest for Gibson.com
Want to get caught up on my recent articles for Gibson.com? You can check my latest stuff at this link at any time but here are some recent features you might dig.
NAMM 2012: Visiting the Gibson Booth
Mean Streets: A Van Halen Tour of the Sunset Strip
What Could Have Been: Zakk Wylde Talks Guns N’ Roses
Yngwie Fast Track: Neoclassical Rock Lead Guitar Crash Course
Zakk Wylde on almost joining G’n'R
I had a chat with the mighty Zakk Wylde recently (It’ll be on the blog soon) and we touched on Zakk’s time jamming with Guns ‘N’ Roses in the mid 90s, as well as his recent jammage with the current line-up in December 2011. You can check the article out here.
A sample:
“It sounded like the riffs I write and the way I write, mixed in with the way the guys write, you know what I mean,” Wylde says. “It would have been like, when I was jamming with Slash and all the guys, even if I’m in the band there’s only one guy that’s playing the solos to ‘November Rain,’ ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’ and all those classic songs. I’m not going to do anything there. But the future stuff that we would have been writing, it would have been cool! Because I love Slash’s playing and I’m buddies with him. It would have been cool, but with those guys there was nothing happening, so we were jamming but it wasn’t going anywhere.”
Hi! I'm Peter Hodgson. I write for Gibson.com, Australian Guitar, Australian Musician, Mixdown Magazine (including my instructional column, 'Unleash Your Inner Rock God,' which has been running since 2007), guitarworld.com, Tone Deaf, Beat (including their weekly hard rock/metal column Crunch) and The Brag. And I'm Assistant Social Coordinator with Seymour Duncan.
I've been playing guitar since I was 8 years old, and I've been writing for magazines since I was 18. I've also worked as a guitar teacher (up to 50 students a week), a setup tech, a newspaper editor, and I've also dabbled in radio a little bit. I live in Melbourne, Australia, and my hobbies include drinking way too much coffee, and eating way too much Mexican food.
You can check out my guitar playing at Reverbnation or on YouTube, and feel free to email me at iheartguitarblog@gmail.com