The moment Les Paul gave Eddie Van Halen a guitar
Eddie Van Halen didn’t use name-brand guitars. As a young first-generation American in the late 1960s, Van Halen simply couldn’t afford top-shelf axes like the Fender Stratocaster or the Gibson Les Paul. More importantly, he couldn’t find a guitar that gave him the sound and feel that he was looking for as a player. So the solution was simple: he made one for himself.
The legend behind the ‘Frankenstrat’ has been told time and again (we’ve talked about it ourselves, in fact). Van Halen wanted the best parts of a Strat and a Les Paul, so he built his new guitar piece by piece in order to achieve his signature sound. Van Halen even gave it a custom paint job, adorning it with his now-classic stripe-heavy design. Van Halen continued to modify that guitar (and build different replicas) over the years, but the original ‘Frankenstrat’ remains the source of Van Halen’s sonic identity.
That doesn’t mean that Van Halen didn’t use other guitars throughout his career. After the early 1980s, the original ‘Frankenstrat’ was largely retired due to its continued use and wear. Kramer became the first guitar company to sponsor Van Halen, constructing a number of replicas and offshoots of the ‘Frankenstrat’ design. Eventually, Van Halen began making his own guitars under the EVH brand, but occasional oddities also filtered into his guitar collection.
One of the greatest and most bizarre additions to his arsenal came when Van Halen performed at the 1988 ‘Les Paul and Friends’ Tribute Concert. Paul was still very much alive at that point and got to see an array of talented musicians pay tribute to him, one of whom was Van Halen. After the concert, Paul presented Van Halen with a custom-made variant of his namesake model.
“Les Paul gave this guitar to me in 1988 when I played at his tribute concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York,” Van Halen explained in the book Eruption: Conversations with Eddie Van Halen. “It was filmed for Cinemax [Les Paul & Friends: He Changed the Music], and I came out and played ‘Cathedral’ and ‘Hot For Teacher’ with Tony Levin on bass and Jan Hammer on keyboards.”
“It was a fun gig. Les had a guitar made for everyone who played,” Van Halen added. “David Gilmour, Waylon Jennings, and the Stray Cats guys were there. It was such a beautiful guitar that I didn’t have the heart to ask Les why he fucked it up by putting a Floyd on it. But it was the first Les Paul ever built with a Floyd, and I’ll always treasure it as a gift.”
“The last time I saw him was when we were on tour and playing a show at the Meadowlands in New Jersey [November 3, 2007],” Van Halen concluded. “Les came into the tune-up room before the show, and I introduced him to Wolfgang. He said, ‘Show me how you do that finger stuff [tapping].’ He almost tried it, but then he went, ‘Nah, I can’t do it.’ Wolfgang said, ‘It’s easy. See I can do it.’ That was a special moment—me, my son, and Les in the tune-up room.”
Check out Van Halen’s performance at the ‘Les Paul and Friends’ tribute down below.
