Legendary: The Fool and Day 48

That's a Cream era Eric Clapton playing a Gibson SG known as "The Fool".  You might not be able to figure out what is more shocking, the crazy paint job on that guitar, or Eric Clapton's 60's Fro.  Either way, that picture does not really show off the guitar in an appreciable way.

The guitar itself is a 1964 standard.  If you read my earlier history on the SG, then you know this makes it a "Les Paul Standard" of that era.  Around this time there was a collective of Dutch artists known as "The Fool", and the psychedelic art movement had just come into full swing.  Being a friend of George Harrison, Clapton thought Cream should get on the bandwagon and do a theme based on their artwork for the upcoming USA tour they were planning.  "The Fool" did instruments for all band members, with Clapton getting this SG.  In fact, it was the love of this SG that caused Clapton to gift "Lucy"(a previous Legendary instrument profiled on this blog) to Harrison.

It was with The Fool that Clapton perfected his "Woman" sound that would dominate his music for decades.  Unlike some artists, Clapton often records with the same instrument he plays live, so many of the later Cream albums were recorded with this exact guitar.  After going through a few people's hands after Cream broke up in 1968, it landed in Todd Rundgren's hands for $500.  Todd had seen Clapton play the guitar live, and it was this guitar that inspired Todd to go into the music industry.  He kept the guitar for decades after, naming it Sunny because it was used to record Sunshine in Your Love.  Todd is most known as a record producer, with credits like Bat Out of Hell by Meat Loaf.  It later was sold for $150,000 but quickly sold a few years after that for $500,000.  It now resides in a private collection, but by someone that at least loves to bring it out for magazines and interviews. 

Day 48

We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow.
The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands,
To fight the horde, singing and crying: Valhalla, I am coming!

We're snowed in here, and so the vikings marched while the snow fell.  Yep, more metal practice.  I'm starting to work my new rock phrases into the palm mute stuff.  I also plugged in the bass and tried my hands at making a matching track of that for what I'm playing.  

Also I found out something: Ted Nugent is a dirty dirty old man.  It turns out that his 70's stuff is very close to the way I play.  I mean, almost exactly.  He stays pentatonic, his hammer on flourish is EXACTLY like mine.  Stranglehold is one of the most awesome riffs in rock history and it is almost exactly the kind of playing I do when I'm practicing.  So if Ted Nugent promises to do certain sexual favors for you if you can play Stranglehold, he's not saying that its hard, he's daring you to take him up on the offer.

Dirty dirty Mot&(*Fu^k#@r