Join Billy Gibbons on a fabulous odyssey across the globe in search of guitars wild, weird and wonderful.

By Chris Gill

Super Sunday. I am about to settle into my favorite La-Z-Boy to watch the game when, to my annoyance, the phone rings. Much to my surprise, on the line is none other than Billy F. Gibbons, frontman for the acclaimed Texas trio ZZ Top. The band is scheduled to appear at the half-time show, and all the excitement and hoopla has apparently given Gibbons a case of guitar fever.

"We're goin' on a guitar safari. Wanna join?" asks the great bearded one. "Does a `53 Les Paul have a goldtop finish?" I reply. "Good. ZZ Top's Rhythmeen tour is picking up in Eastern Europe in a few days. Meet me in Moscow. Thursday. High noon."

"Wait," I plead. "What are we hunting?"

"Exotic breeds. Endangered beasts. The works." A few days later, in the aftermath of the Packers' great victory, I find myself on the red-eye rocket to Russia. Stepping out of the plane, I scan the airport waiting room for Gibbons, but not a single pair of Ray Bans are to be seen. Suddenly, a sultry young woman in a leopard-skin jacket catches my attention. She is holding a sign reading, "`59 `burst, cheap." This has to be my liaison.

The lady leads me to a Mercedes limo and opens the door. "My name is Corinna," she coos in a voice as sweet as Clapton's Cream-era woman tone. As I settle into the handsomely upholstered back seat, she reaches over and hands me a pamphlet entitled Gibbonics-The Official Language of Guitar Connoisseurs. "You'll be needing this as well," she says, slipping me an envelope filled with money from various countries-dollars, yen, marks and rubles.

A few minutes later we pull up in front of Boris Kaganov's Axe Shack. Hopping out of the Mercedes, I spy a gnarly, Russian-made sonic surfboard in the shack's window-burnt-cheese ocher finish, clamp-mount pickup arrangement and non-inner-planetary connecting jacks. "Isn't she fine?" says a familiar baritone voice. I turn around and there stands Billy F. Gibbons in the flesh, his beard flapping in the frozen wind.

"The girl or the guitar?" I retort. "Both are first class." I kiss my fingers for emphasis.

"Oh dude, these guitars are out there!" says Gibbons. "They sound, well, Russian. Of course, there's tons of them around here. Step inside. Let's take a look around."

As we set foot inside the shop, we're met by Comrade Kaganov himself, who leads us to a back room overstocked with sundry Communist-era oddities-Glasnostcasters, Telesputniks and the like. Gibbons and I settle into two huge, overstuffed chairs.

"You know, the real reason I'm here is to talk to you about `guitar madness'," I say. "I'll gladly respond to any inquiry about my particular fave rave six-string thangs," says Gibbons. With that word of encouragement, we are on our way. A wild, bumpy ride, for sure.

GUITAR WORLD: What got you started on your quest for guitars?

BILLY GIBBONS: Let's start at the beginning. It was the sound of blues music that we heard in the mid Sixties that really centered our interest. When I speak of blues from this period, it was not only American blues artists but the British interpreters as well. That draws us to one of the most recognizable icons of Sixties British blues, the John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers album, with Eric Clapton on guitar and the famous photograph on the back cover showing Clapton playing a sunburst Les Paul and a Marshall amplifier. At the time, I had been playing Fender Esquires, Jazzmasters, Jaguars and Stratocasters. It was mostly a single-coil Fender game. The Les Paul was less than popular then. We suspected that double-humbucking pickups were the source of that Clapton sound. A friend of mine called and said, "I've got an instrument with two humbucking pickups." It turned out to be a Flying V. That was our first entry into the humbucking world.

GW: Shortly thereafter you found Pearly Gates [Gibbons' `59 sunburst Les Paul Standard], and, as they say, the rest is history.

GIBBONS: Indeed.

GW: Having found the perfect guitar, why did you continue to acquire them?

GIBBONS: Pearly has such an unmistakable character that we felt it was necessary to find another instrument with a similar sound to use as a spare guitar. We accumulated dozens of guitars, but nothing quite matched her. But instead of tossing these other acquisitions away, they kept accumulating. It's an ongoing saga that never ends.

GW: What kind of guitars did you accumulate?

GIBBONS: Just about anything that had these famous humbucking pickups. You had these oddball, pointy things like the Flying "V" and the Explorer. Those too had great sound. They came from 1958 and had taller and skinnier fret wire and a little bit different feel. Then we started finding things like the ES-5 Switchmaster with not one, not two, but three humbuckers, and a toggle switch with a setting that says "All." That's when it started getting really whacked.

GW: I've heard rumors that Jimi Hendrix gave you a pink Stratocaster back in those days.

GIBBONS: It was just before we formed ZZ Top. Frank Beard [drums] and Dusty Hill [bass] were working in Dallas with the American Blues, and my band, the Moving Sidewalks, had been hired to open some shows for Jimi Hendrix. At that time I was saying, "Here's the master of the Stratocaster." That domain really belongs to him. Here was an example of a player who not only developed some skills on chord structure and new chord positionings for rock music, but was also really squeezing things out of a simple guitar and amplifier setup that had not been written about in any manual. As far as I know, he was the first exponent of playing a Stratocaster in the "in between" toggle switch setting. At that time, Fender supported what he was doing as an artist. He really didn't mind playing new, out-of-the-box guitars. Fender was sending out stacks of them-I remember he once got 17 different cartons from them. They were coming so fast and furious at him with new guitars, but he had few oldies and goodies. I acquired the pink one during our time together. It was a late Fifties Strat.

Suddenly, our conversation iss interrupted when Corinna bursts into the room. "Mr. Gibbons!" she shouts. "Elwood called on the cellular phone. He's located a Missing Link guitar!"

"Most excellent," replies Gibbons. "I'm afraid we'll have to continue our conversation at a later date. Why don't we meet up in Hallah."

"In the former East Germany?"

"You got it."

It's a gray winter's day in Hallah. The temperature is about 10 below zero, not counting wind chill factor. As I make my way to the back entrance of the town's Konzert Halle, I'm stopped by an armed security guard brandishing a machine gun. Shaking, I flash my credentials, and he nods and points at a concrete door. Inside, I'm greeted by the sight of Gibbons exhaling a cloud of steam. "Hey," he chokes. "I just swallowed a mouthful of Tabasco-ridden soup. It took my breath away. I'm lovin' it!"

Standing at his side is a tall, thin fellow with a neon-green Sid Vicious haircut. "Meet Mr. Elwood Francis," says Gibbons. Currently employed as Gibbons' guitar tech, Francis, explains Gibbons, is his chief co-conspirator in guitar madness. Mr. Francis, guitarist, and Mr. Gibbons, guitarist, are co-collaborators in a new design school using "found" materials. Executing designs from their West Coast studio, "Slab 7 Studiosa," they plan on unleashing their Pacifiko models on an unsuspecting public soon. In his spare time, Elwood plays his Gibson ES-295 with his band, Prunella Scales, whose fuzzy pop sounds are soon to be heard on their forthcoming Mutiny Records release, Dressing Up the Idiot.

"Welcome to Hallah," says Elwood. "We've renamed it `Hellah.' " "Hellahva place they got here," I deadpan. "We're thrashed, brother," says Gibbons. "This is our fifth gig in a row. It's so cold and desolate here. But hey, the local folks are trying. They're making attempts to have a good time. Can't beat that. We could be on a 10-day run with enthusiasm like this."

At Gibbons' prompting, the three of us convene in a tiny backstage room that is currently serving as storage for Gibbons' and Francis' ever-expanding guitar collection. Guitars and amps are stacked to the ceiling. In a matter of minutes, the Gibbonics is flying fast and furious.

GW: Describe some of your famous custom guitars and the ideas behind them.

GIBBONS: Ah, let's light up the work of [luthier] James Trussart's strangeness. All French-made full customs, in Paris. Inspired by the metal-bodied designs of the Thirties Nationals, only modified into a sort of Fenderesque hot rod. His new, Rust-O-Rama corrosion technique is stunning. And just as surprising as, say, the invention of the metal airplane. Sounds as smooth as a Barry White recording.

The new House of JB guitars from the House of JB Customs are also great. All natural-fiber composition and complete wrecklessness when it comes to observing speed limits. Fine pearl `inlay' for the fashion conscious . . . as we all are. Call him.

All of our one-off, ZZ Top six-string electric Spanish guitars and basses are outfitted for 24-hour field use. Even the special axes fabricated for MTV videos rip with tone terror. They're all equipped with some badass monstrous tone generators from Seymour Duncan's line. The Duncan Antiquities absolutely smoke. Makes all the difference in these rare, off-the-wall customs.

GW: What are the rarest and oddest axes in your possession?

GIBBONS: Well, the absolute most weird are the HeliumZZ. They, well . . . almost levitate. They've got this inner bladder with a check-valve loading spigot for force-thrust injection of helium or other gaseous chemicals. The instruments have a thin-skinned body membrane in place of the more traditional wood body. The result remains nearly unmanageable. They're neck-heavy, the bodies undulate and flex unpredictably and they have a tendency to want to float away. Just, well, no straps.

Once again, the conversation is interrupted. Show time. Gibbons, Hill and Beard take the stage and proceed to rock the East Germans to Hallah. Tommorow: Munich.

Ah, Munich, charming mountain outpost of the Bavarian republic and headquarters for Europe's finest breweries. The air is literally perfumed with the bodacious bouquet of beer. I've received instructions to meet Mr. Billy in his hotel room. As I knock on his door, it swings open, and there's Gibbons sitting in a hard-backed chair, talking on the telephone. Strewn across his bed are sundry CD's-Barkmarket, Reef, Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack and a few old Paul Butterfield Blues Band releases.

"Let's see," says Gibbons in the mouthpiece. "Pearly Gates. She's got pedigree, celebrity status, was played at the Super Bowl. How much you think I can get for her?"

"Don't do it!" I yell, wrestling the receiver from his hand and hanging up. "That was Sotheby's," chuckles Gibbons. "Don't worry. I just wanted to rattle their cage. I've no intention of parting with Pearly."

I am relieved, to say the least. It's hard to imagine a new ZZ Top album that isn't graced with Pearly's presence. With that, we proceed to our final round of questioning.

GW: Mr. Billy . . . what can you tell us of your first guitar-the "first one"-and its effect on you?

GIBBONS: The "effect" is the word! Man, Christmas Day, high noon . . . the unwrapping, and by sundown . . . the full-tilt "slab-slapping"! The "effect" took the electricity from the body to guitar through amplifier and on into atmosphere. There was no turnin' back as far as the "effect" was concerned. Nor moi.

GW: If you had only $100 to spend on an axe, what would you buy and why?

GIBBONS: I'd be willin' to throw down a "C" on any solidbody outfitted with a rear-position pickup. Don't even have to work. Grocery sack for a case, some spare change for a couple of Radio Shack leads and a furious fuzzbox. Killer combo for your stack of greenbacks.

GW: What developments do you foresee in the electric guitar's future?

GIBBONS: More knobs. Bigger knobs. Bigger tone. And probably much, much louder. There's a famous saying . . . well, kinda famous . . . which goes, "Anyone can rebuild a guitar, but it takes a real man to cut one up." Long as there's some thrashin' goin' on, we'll be fine, fine, fine. Chop the broccoli, brother.

From www.guitarworld.com