Storytime: I Call It Vera · 7:35am May 25th, 2013
For those of you that missed it, Jeff Hanneman's memorial service was today in LA. This blog is a good read, and the thought of a bunch of circle pits going on at the service warms my heart.
Throughout history and fiction, people have always given names to their weapons. From Jayne Cobb's Vera, to Stephen Colbert's Sweetness, to Blain's Ol' Painless, to Aragorn's Anduril, name's are abundant. And like any good weapon, musician's like to name their weapons, particularly their axes.
* The most well known named guitar is Dr. Brian May's (he wrote his PhD dissertation while recording Queen's early material) Red Special. Hand built by the Good Doctor himself, it includes wood taken from an old fireplace and a tremolo system made out an old bike brake. It has its own Wiki page, if you want to really read about the unique-ness of it.
* Zakk Wylde has many variation's on his signature Bull's Eye Les Paul guitars. His classic white-on-black bullseye is named "The Grail". The orange and black is called The Buzzsaw, and the camo one is called Stormin' Norman. And like any good ol' boy, he does have a Confederate Flag finished guitar he calls The Rebel, but is semi-affectionately called The Tetanus Special by his guitar tech for all the rusty bottlecaps nailed to the thing.
* Eddie Van Halen has the famous Frankenstein, which he says he built by hand by throwing a bunch of parts together. It miraculously worked, and has used it ever since. The name spawned the term "frankenstrat", which typically means guitars built from a mish-mash of parts taken from other guitars. He also had another guitar called the Bumblebee, which was appropriately a Strat with black and yellow stripes. The guitar was buried with Dimebag Darrel, who was laid to rest in a Kiss coffin.
* Yngwie "Unleash the fucking fury" Malmsteen's cream colored Strat is nicknamed The Duck, for the Donald Duck sticker he has on the headstock.
* Vadim Pruzhanov, keyboardist for DragonForce, named his keytar Batman. That is possibly the most radical sentence I have ever typed.
* Steve Vai has a custom Ibanez superstrat (Official Fender Stratocasters are called strats, stratocaster-shaped guitars that aren't made by Fender are called superstrats. Funny thing, the Strat body shape isn't copyrighted, but the Fender headstock is) called Evo, which has the snazzy tree-of-life inlays on the fretboard and the bizzarro carry handle in the body. His green guitar from his Zappa days is called the Green Meanie. His current touring drummer, Jeremy Coulson, has a drumline drumset he calls the beast, which has to be seen to be believed.
* Lemmy of Motorhead has his Rickenbacker bass, which he calls The Rickenbastard, in true Lemmy fashion. He's played the thing since his days in Hawkwind, back in 1969.
* Tony Iommi has the Monkey, the bright red Gibson SG he recorded the entirety of the original Black Sabbath record with. The SG copy he has used since Heaven And Hell is called The Old Boy.
* ZZ Top guitarist and beard afficianado Billy Gibbons named his sunburst Les Paul Pearly Gates. Miss Pearly Gates, she's a classy lady.
* Jeff Hanneman was very fond of his custom ESP Soloist guitar, that featured the Heineken logo changed to have his name on it.
* My own guitars are named Leviathan and Dragon.
Hey, remember when I said I would eventually write a story? I lied. Maybe. I dunno. I'm a liar now, but I might not be in the future.
Because I needed another reason to hero-worship him.
My own keyboard is named Moxxi, partly because it's a Yamaha MOX8, and partly because... Well.