When Gibson announced a special Murphy Lab reissue of Eric Clapton’s 1958 Gibson Les Paul Custom last month, it didn’t quite paint the full picture.
Sure, it was Slowhand’s favorite and famed triple-humbucker Les Paul for quite some time, but it’s also a guitar that Albert Lee has owned since 1979, and under his care, it’s passed through some rather distinguished hands. Clapton may have put the guitar on the map, but it’s far more traveled than that.
Lee often frequented the guitar shop, Selmer, on London’s Charing Cross Road, which is where his tale with the Les Paul begins.
“Every Saturday I’d come up on the train to see what was in Selmer’s,” Lee says. “So they opened up this guitar case, and there’s a brand-new Les Paul Custom,” he recounts to Guitar World. “I thought, ‘Yeah, I’ll join your band!’” he says with a laugh.
“I played that guitar throughout the early ’60s. And then this guy persuaded me to sell it to him. He pestered me and pestered me. I let it go, and I regretted it for a long, long time.”
Fast forward to 1978 and Lee is the fresh face in Eric Clapton’s touring band.
“I remember the first day, chatting with Eric. For some reason, I had a picture of my old guitar with me, you know, and I showed it to him,” he says. “I told him how much I missed that guitar. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I’ve got one of those at home somewhere.’”
Lee had forgotten about their conversation almost as soon as he’d had it. But it stayed at the forefront of Clapton’s mind.
“The next day at rehearsals,” Lee remarks, “the roadie walked in with this big case and opened it up, and it’s Eric’s Les Paul Custom for me to play.
“I guess it was mine,” Lee says with a smile.
“From there on, I used it on the whole tour. Eric never asked for the guitar back. He was happy that I was enjoying it and using it onstage.”
It turns out the guitar has a very prestigious history.
Under Clapton’s ownership, it was featured on Disraeli Gears where the guitarist wielded it to create his “woman tone” by switching to its bridge pickup and rolling down the tone control. The Custom was also played at countless Clapton-related shows in the 1960s and ’70s, where it made history with other famous artists of the day.
“From Paul Kossoff to Eric and John Lennon and George Harrison playing it,” Lee quips. “I’d no idea Eric used it with Derek and the Dominos (where he employed it for slide guitar). Great bit of history there.”
Clapton can’t recall what happened to the guitar after Disraeli Gears. He thinks it ended up in Kossoff’s hands when Free and Blind Faith, Clapton’s post-Cream supergroup, toured together. He says the two groups jammed together “quite a lot.” In the end, Kossoff got the guitar and used it on Free’s debut album, Tons of Sobs.
The Les Paul wound up back in Clapton’s possession in time to be used for his cameo with John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band at the Toronto Rock n’ Roll Revival in September 1969.
From one Beatle to another, the Custom would star when he and George Harrison toured with Delaney and Bonnie, later in 1969.
While researching the guitar’s patchy but fascinating history for Gibson’s new replica, Michael Doyle found evidence of Harrison playing the guitar onstage — with Clapton on Harrison’s Stratocaster.
Clapton then used the guitar for his prominent slide work on Derek and the Dominos’ Layla. The Custom was chosen because Clapton didn’t like its skinny frets.
If you can’t get on with a guitar because the frets aren’t right for you, what do you do?” asks Doyle. “Well, set it up for slide.”
The guitar’s history post–’78 has been a little less star-studded. After Clapton had removed the pickguard and pickup covers, he restored the guitar to its former glory and found it simply too good to share. Until, of course, he gave it away to Albert Lee.
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