The story of how Slash ended up with Joe Perry’s guitar
To guitar collectors and music gearheads, the 1959 model of Gibson Les Paul very well may be the holy grail of guitars. Just over 600 models were manufactured before Gibson temporarily halted production due to low sales. The Les Paul line was restarted a year later, and it didn’t take long for the legendary Sunburst ’59s to gain a huge reputation in rock music. You know the players: Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, Joe Walsh, and even more modern players such as Mike McCready and Joe Bonamassa.
The rarity of the guitar contributed to its legendary status, but so too did the guitar’s unique tone and sound. It was the de facto guitar of the British blues explosion, with everyone from Peter Green to Jeff Beck getting their hands on Les Pauls before the end of the 1960s. They weren’t always easy to spot – occasionally, the guitars would have their serial numbers painted over, or the classic sunburst finish would be redone in a different style. These disguises helped keep some ’59s around, and sometimes they even floated between classic players.
Some were intentional, like when Walsh gifted Page his very-first Les Paul. Other times, happy accidents caused guitarists from different generations to wind up with each other’s gear. That’s how Guns N’ Roses axeman Slash ended up with a guitar that had originally belonged to Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry.
“When I was probably 16, 17 years old, Aerosmith Live Bootleg on the foldout there was a bunch of them and Joe had this Les Paul that didn’t look like your typical cherry sunburst Les Paul,” Slash explained in the GibsonTV series The Collection. “I just always remembered that that was a cool-looking guitar, and I think there was an Aerosmith poster that my friend had where he played the same guitar.”
Slash eventually got his hands on a ’59 Les Paul replica made by luthier Kris Derrig, becoming the guitar that he used to record Appetite for Destruction. He continued to collect Les Paul’s in order to bring them out on tour, and one day Slash received a phone call from his management with a surprise.
“Fast forward to 1988, Guns was on our first tour of Japan, and I get a phone call in my hotel room from management saying that someone contacted us saying they’ve got this guitar you might be interested in,” Slash says. “It was owned by Eric Roberts and Joe Perry. I was like, ‘It’s a ’59 Les Paul. If it’s the guitar I think you’re talking about, I know exactly what it looks like. I know all the scratches and stuff on it so send me some pictures.'”
The details checked out, and Slash realised that he had the ability to buy the same ’59 Les Paul that he had been lusting over for years. He bought the guitar for $8,000, which Slash considered a steal since the owner “didn’t know what he had”. Eventually, Slash used the guitar in the ‘November Rain’ video during his climactic guitar solo outside of the church. The instrument became iconic for an entirely new generation of rock fans, and the video clued Perry into the fact that his beloved guitar was still out there.
Perry befriended Slash and continued to bring up a desire to get his Les Paul back. Slash continued to hold off, not wanting to let go of the legendary axe but eventually gifted Perry the guitar back for free. Before he did, though, Slash had Gibson create a replica of the guitar so that he could still have a version of the instrument to tour with, which he showed off in the episode of The Collection.
Check out Slash talking about the Joe Perry ’59 Les Paul down below.
