Summer Of ’59

THE SEARING TONE OF DON FELDER’S ’59 LES PAUL is part of the magic of Hotel California – its thick voice was the perfect foil for Joe Walsh’s Telecaster lines during what is, arguably, the most famous extended solo in rock music.

Felder says he bought it from a travelling dealer famous for his superb stable of vintage guitars. “His name was Tony Dukes,” he recalls, “and every time we’d go through Texas, Tony would show up. He was a horse trader and he always had something in his truck you wanted. He would show up in a station wagon or a truck that was full of Les Pauls, Teles and Strats, and I bought probably 20 pieces from him over the years. It must have been about 1974 or something, right after our first big hit,

One Of These Nights, when I started making money. He came round and I think I bought three or four pieces from him: the Les Paul, a Tele, a Strat and some other stuff.”

The Les Paul was the guitar Felder played on Hotel California and he still has it today. Now, Gibson has faithfully recreated it in the Don Felder ‘Hotel California’ Les Paul, which is being made in three grades, ranging from the least expensive VOS model, to a more pricey aged version and, at the top of the heap, a signed-and-aged model. At the same time, Gibson also recreated Felder’s twin-neck EDS-1275 that he used for live renditions of the song.

“They did a remarkable job of replicating those guitars,” Felder says. “What the Gibson Custom Shop is making is as good, if not better, than the old guitars – because some of them have little quirks that you don’t want to mess with. That ’59 of mine frets out way up high on the B-string, and I don’t want anybody to try to dress the frets or try to fix that. But the new one doesn’t [have those quirks] and it’s brilliant. I used it on this last record instead of my original – its sound has got a lot more fire in it.”

Felder also had the chance to make a request when he visited Gibson to discuss the ‘Hotel California’ Les Paul.

“I went to the Custom Shop before they started making it and I said, How do you put all the scratches on [aged Custom replicas]? And they opened a drawer and took out this rhinestone belt-buckle that said ‘Elvis’ on it. I said, ‘You have to use that on my guitar – Elvis was the first person I saw on television when I was 10 years old and he inspired me to start playing!’ So I told ’em, ‘You have to use it, and they did! They’ve really been fantastic.”