![]() Luxurious flourishes were sprinkled throughout the Custom. (Image credit: Neil Godwin/Future) Luxury line “And I said, ‘Because you can see your hands move when you’re on the stage and it looks good with any outfit you wear.’” Prev of 6 Next Prev of 6 Next “Everybody wanted to know, why black?” he reflected in his book. 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. It was dubbed the ‘Black Beauty’, and lived up to the billing. “Chevrolet had a whole bunch of models, Ford had a whole bunch of models. ![]() “You have all kinds of players out there who like this and like that,” Gibson president Ted McCarty noted in 1992. 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). The firm had already planted its flag deep into the solidbody sector with its inaugural Les Paul release, the 1952 Goldtop. And I used to think anyone who’s got a Les Paul Custom has already made it.”Īnd that, of course, was what the Gibson boardroom wanted players to conclude when faced with the Custom. “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. I used to think anyone who’s got a Les Paul Custom has already made it Steve Hackett It was 1959, and with the lifting of restrictions on US imports, the mythologised Gibson Les Paul Custom was suddenly a tangible reality. The twinkle of the diamond headstock inlay. The jet-black lustre of the hourglass body. To the window-shoppers of London’s Tin Pan Alley, it was a new arrival to quicken the pulse. 60 years since the iconic ’57 incarnation, this is the true story of the Les Paul Custom - with testimony from the stars who wielded it… ![]() It was the executive model that raised the spec of the Goldtop and armed a roll-call of seminal players. (Image credit: Neil Godwin/Future) Introduction
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |