It duckwalked across countless stages in the hands of Chuck Berry, produced some of the most iconic riffs in the Guns N' Roses catalog and hung dangerously low on Joan Jett's hips for decades. And while Gibson's future is up in the air following the company's filing for bankruptcy protection earlier this week, there is no erasing the the 124-year-old guitar maker's titanic place in rock history.
From the Les Paul models to the popular SG, Flying V and ES-335s, Gibsons have been used and abused by a hall of fame-worthy list of players, including Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, Carlos Santana, Sheryl Crow, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, Tegan Quin of Tegan and Sara, Bob Marley, John Lennon, B.B. King, Robert Johnson and James Hetfield.
Here are some of those guitar heroes plugging in to their Gibsons.
Chuck Berry
Slash
Eric Clapton
Joan Jett
Bob Marley
Sheryl Crow
Pete Towshend
James Hetfield (Metallica)
B.B. King
Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters)
Of course the list of great musicians who have relied on the Les Paul sound over the years stretches for pages, and well beyond the scope of this article. Many players like Peter Townsend, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck who are more associated with Fender guitars employed the Les Paul at some point in their careers.
In the writing of this article inspirational musicians like Tom Scholz of Boston, Gary Richrath of REO Speedwagon and Joe Perry of Aerosmith came to mind. Certainly you can think of many more.
List of Gibson players
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Les Paul on stage with his heavily customized Les Paul Recording model
This is an alphabetized list of musicians who have made notable use of Gibson Guitar models in live performances or studio recordings. Because of the great popularity of these models, musicians are listed here only if their use of these instruments was especially significant—that is, if: