SLASH To Pay Tribute To LES PAUL With New 'Appetite' Guitar

Guitarist Slash (VELVET REVOLVER, ex-GUNS N' ROSES) has revealed via his Twitter page that he is currently working with the technicians at the Gibson guitar-manufacturing company on a new Les Paul signature model.

Says the top-hatted axeman: "We're going to call the new Les Paul Slash model the 'Appetite' guitar. It is modeled after the guitar I recorded that album [GUNS N' ROSES' classic 1987 LP, 'Appetite For Destruction'] [and] it will be my tribute to Les Paul, the man and mentor."

In an interview with L.A. Weekly, Slash stated about Les Paul, "For the last 60 years he's had this major influence on guitar playing and the recording industry. Les was the kind of guy that anytime you were in his presence, he was always very upbeat, always cracking jokes, always making comments about the women present... The fact that he took a liking to me and took me under his wing was a huge honor. We always talked on the phone and that kind of stuff. It was special. It's important for kids to know who Les was because when I first started playing, I thought Les Paul was the name of a guitar. I didn't know it was a real person until I learned from guys like Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. Obviously from that point on I researched and then finally got to meet him. Kids nowadays don't even really know that kind of history but it's important to have an understanding of that delay pedal that you're using and where the original concept came from [laughs]. Whenever you hear guitar harmonies recorded, like Brian May used to record harmonies on all of QUEEN's records, that was all Les Paul stuff. He invented the technique where you could layer guitars. Before that people just had to play live and that was it."