‘Old Black’: the 1957 Gibson Les Paul Glenn Frey fell in love with
Not all guitars are born equal, and for guitarists, selecting a six-string is no easy task.
While some guitarists go through guitars as if the instruments were disposable, amassing expansive collections in the process, others tend to stay true to one trust axe. Glenn Frey is in the latter camp, and his weapon of choice was always his Gibson Les Paul.
One of the very first mass-produced, solid-body guitars to emerge onto the market back in the 1950s, the Les Paul was a ready-made rock and roll icon. What’s more, it came complete with the stamp of approval from one of America’s most important guitarists, Les Paul himself. Unsurprisingly, then, the Les Paul has spurred on the creation of countless rock masterpieces, as well as giving men going through mid-life crises something to spend their money on.
Back in the 1970s, when Glenn Frey was just starting out with an unknown group by the name of the Eagles, the Les Paul was dominating the emerging landscape of hard rock and proto-metal, spurred on by Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, who was rarely seen without the solid-body guitar in his grasp.
In time, though, the instrument proved itself to be equally adept at creating the soft rock sounds that launched the Eagles into orbit, defining the American rock landscape of the entire decade.
Throughout that time, though, Frey was not content with any old Les Paul. During the early days of the Eagles, the songwriter co-wrote a few tracks, like ‘Take It Easy’, with Jackson Browne. During those joint sessions, Browne gifted the Eagles member a black Les Paul Junior from 1957, with a broken pickup. Rather than replacing said broken pick-up, though, Frey fell in love with the distinctive sound of the guitar, promptly christening it ‘Old Black’.
Across virtually his entire career, ‘Old Black’ was rarely far from Frey’s fingertips. Even when the Eagles were at the top of the rock world, on their way to becoming one of the most commercially successful groups in American history, the songwriter refused to upgrade his axe. Sure, he played other guitars here and there, and experimented with his sound at varying points across his discography, but he invariably went back to that battered old Les Paul in the end.
Both in the studio and onstage, ‘Old Black’ was a faithful servant to Frey, and it offered far less in the way of feuds and arguments than his various real-life bandmates. In fact, the pair remained a united front throughout Frey’s life and music career, right up until the songwriter’s passing back in 2016, whereupon it was passed down to his son, Deacon Frey, who continues to play the guitar during Eagles live shows.
Fittingly, at Glenn Frey’s final appearance onstage with the band, in July 2015 in Louisiana, it was ‘Old Black’ that he played for the majority of the gig, bookending his time with the instrument that had seen him go from an unknown songwriter trying to make his way in Los Angeles, to one of America’s defining songwriters, to a bona fide rock legend.
Looking back upon his illustrious discography, it is difficult to say where Glenn Frey might have ended up had Jackson Browne not gifted him that Les Paul all those years ago. Certainly, though, the rock landscape of America would be virtually unrecognisable.
