Billy Gibbons Told Me a Secret

BILLY GIBBONS TOLD ME A SECRET

If Jack Nicholson played guitar, he’d be Billy Gibbons.

Monster talent, famous in every corner of the globe, funny, and mysterious. 

I’ve rubbed elbows with the man a few times. Our encounters were always unannounced. He moves and speaks quickly. At a guitar festival, or an industry event, a nightclub, a store... I found myself next to Rev. Willie, usually answering questions. He asks a lot of questions. Just as suddenly, like the Scirocco desert wind: GONE. He has good Texas manners. He is polite to his wife, and introduces her proudly. He was WONDERFUL with my little daughter; funny and inclusive.

WARNING: GUITAR CONTENT

If the minutiae of Les Pauls holds no charm for you, best move along. 

Billy Gibbons told me a secret about Pearly Gates, a beautifully-figured sunburst 1959 Les Paul Model (It says “Model” on the headstock, not “Standard”) the world’s most-famous and best-sounding “‘Burst”. It’s a guitar which has its own capacious bedroom in a mansion in Houston’s tony River Oaks. George Gruhn, a towering authority in the vintage guitar world, opines that Billy’s “Pearly” initiated the return of the Les Paul to the music world’s main stage. (No Les Paul Standards were made from 1961-1967) 

In the mid 1960s, his band traveled in some big ol’ Packard. That’s already the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. 

He “loaned” the car to a girlfriend who had to travel from Texas to a Los Angeles movie audition. She landed the gig, sold the car (Which, somewhere in all this, got named “Pearly Gates”) and sent the dough back to Houston, ON THE VERY DAY  that Billy found some  farmer selling a minty ’59 “Burst”, still sporting old-fashioned flat-wound strings and all the paperwork. $250, done deal, they transferred the name “Pearly” to the guitar. 

Cue music: La Grange

 Dissolve to me , Billy, and Billy’s wife, Gilligan, (“Billy and Gilly”, he smiled) standing in front of a row of vintage Les Pauls, in a store on Sunset Boulevard. 

PAUSE TO SET UP THE PUNCHLINE 

(You Know. The “SECRET.” Stay with me.)

Armies of electric blues/rock guitarists have sought Billy’s tone, usually by reading interviews of The Man. Billy’s a funny guy. Like many beset celebs, he takes pleasure in sometimes providing silly, misleading answers to the press. He uses a quarter for a pick. Or a Peso. Or a ground-down Peso. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Verbal obfuscation aside, pictures of the guitar certainly show he does something funny with the strings. 

Many theorize the reduced bearing pressure helps get that sound. Much debate persists. 

Back to our scene... Gilly is asking me questions about the Les Pauls. We'll leave aside the fact that Billy Gibbons is standing with us, but she’s asking ME. I guess marriage is the same everywhere. 

There was an early Tune-O-Matic-equipped Goldtop, with an astronomical price tag, about which Gilly expressed shock.

I said, “Well, that old wraparound system I showed you was being phased out, and this is a super-early Tune-O-Matic. 

And she asks... “SO... NOBODY would EVER wrap the string around the Tune-O-Matic's stoptail?

I picked my words carefully. Casting my gaze at Billy, I said “Well, SOME people might.”

Billy shrugged, palms up, and said, 

“Hey-that’s the way it came when I bought it”. 

        Cue music, trumpet, "Wah-wah-waaaaaaaaaaaah"

Mystery solved.

Pearly's original owner, some anonymous, fiddle-scrapin’-hay shaker had probably traded his earlier wraparound Paul for the Tune-O-Matic-equipped ‘Burst, and installed the strings “wrong” from force of habit, and the quirk gets credited to Billy. To say nothing of setting off decades of debate among players, techs, and luthiers.

What do people who DON’T worry about this stuff DO with their lives?