Mistaken Identity: Guitar Edition

[EdwardMarlowe]

Thought popped into my head this morning.... I've mention elsewhere recently making the discovery that at time of recording Bollocks, Steve Jones had not only the famous ex-NY Dolls white LP Custom, but also a black '54 Custom with p90s. It's not certain afaik which of these he used on which tracks on the album (plus they double tracked a lot of the guitars on there to the best of my knowledge), but I suspect it's the reason why I never quite found a LP with humbuckers that wasn't muddier sounding than the Jones sound I was after. Course, that may also have been something to do with the alchemy of plugging a LP into a Fender Twin...  Any road, this put in me on mind of a lot of other tracks which must have inspired many guitarists to buy a guitar style famously associated with / photographed with their heroes, but which ultimately had about as much to do with the record as, well..... that resonator on the cover of Brothers in Arms, or that Gretsch Wham posed with in a video for a song which, best as I can make out, has zero guitar whatsoever on it. 



The two biggies that spring instantly to mind for me are Page and Hendrix. Page is indelibly associated with the Les Paul, but the first two(?) albums are primarily Telecaster. Then there's the Stairway doubleneck - which was only ever used live; the solos in particular on the record are all Tele. 

Hendrix smashed the headstock of his Strat at a gig right before the overnight recording session for the lead parts of Purple Haze; the lead guitar tracks on that cut were all done on a borrowed, right handed Telecaster restrung left-handed. 

There are legion examples in the rockabilly genre. Among the revivalists, there's a huge lean towards big semis, particularly Gretsches. And yeah, some of the big rock and roll guys played those - Cochran's 6210, Berry's Gibson 345s - but if you dig back to all the original rockabilly cuts right in the early days, the far and away most commonly used electric guitar in the genre was.... a Telecast (Teles seem to crop up a lot here). Think, e.g., Paul Burlison's lead guitar on Johnny Burnette's 1956 version of Train Kept A Rollin' . 

So. Any others anyone's aware of? 

[ezbass]

Despite being associated with LPs and SGs at the time, Pete Townshend used a hollowbody Gretsch on Who’s Next.

 

Eric Johnson, using a Strat pretty much exclusively in his career (although he’s also been using an SG recently) actually recorded Cliffs of Dover, probably his most iconic tune, on a 335. Still sounds like EJ.

 

 

[EdwardMarlowe]

22 hours ago, ezbass said:

Despite being associated with LPs and SGs at the time, Pete Townshend used a hollowbody Gretsch on Who’s Next.

 

Eric Johnson, using a Strat pretty much exclusively in his career (although he’s also been using an SG recently) actually recorded Cliffs of Dover, probably his most iconic tune, on a 335. Still sounds like EJ.

 

 

I suspect EJ himself is the only one who could hear the difference... Man has the ears of a dog.