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

Legendary: Lucy and Day 37

One of the most famous Les Pauls ever, Lucy was a red Les Paul Standard owned and used by George Harrison of the Beatles for many decades.  The most famous of the stories involving the Les Paul and The Beatles was that it shared the spotlight for The White Album.  Harrison had a song that he thought was great, but McCartney and Lennon were fighting too much to pay much attention to it.  They were saying it should be cut.  Harrison got angry and left the studio.  The next day he came back with the Les Paul and put it in the hands of Eric Clapton.  With Clapton in studio, the battling band was on their best behavior and created one of the greatest Beatles guitar-centric songs ever, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".

The history of this Les Paul goes back to before Harrison.  Rick Derringer owned the guitar, getting it in a trade for an amp.  Back then, Derringer says it was a particularly grimey looking gold top '57.  His dad repeatedly told him that it looks old and worn out, so when they were near the Gibson factory they had it refinished there.  At the time the Gibson SG's were popular in a translucent red, so that is what it was refinished in.  Rick later sold the guitar because he said the re-finish had totally changed the sound to something he didn't like, and it was at the shop that Eric Clapton bought it.  Clapton had begun using his Gibson SG for all his Cream music.  Shortly after, Clapton committed to using SG's for all the Cream related material.  Not wanting the Les Paul to live in a closet, he gifted it to George Harrison.  George said it reminded him of Lucille Ball, and so the guitar was re-named Lucy.

Harrison kept the guitar and used it through the rest of the Beatle's career, and when the band broke up he used it in his own solo endeavors.  The guitar was stolen in the 70's, and sold to a pawn shop.  It was sold for a small sum of money to an unnamed patron.  The sale was tracked, and the man was revealed to be living in Mexico.  Using a 3rd party, the guitar was negotiated for and eventually returned in exchange for a new Les Paul and some other music equipment.  Harrison kept the guitar close by his side for the rest of his life.

Day 37

Not a big eventful day really.  

I said that later my memoirs might turn out to be posts like today.  I did my warm up in Rocksmith, and then switched to my regular amp and practiced all my clean material, then played some bluesy rock, and finally cranked the gain and played some metal sounding stuff.  I did not get around to learning the Funk strumming like I was saying yesterday.  Maybe tomorrow.  I really don't even know the word for the technique.  It is kind of like Palm muting.  You palm mute "chug" and people will think "metal".  You do a multi-string slide and people think "blues".  So I really need to learn the basic technique of Funk.

I did get my bass out and make some winter time adjustments to the neck.  Georgia weather...

I need to re-organize my play area.  I've got some wall hooks I want to use to organize my cables, and I need to move my bass amp into the same area as my guitar amp.  Nothing discourages you from practice like a hassle.