In a recent chat with Rick Beato, The Police’s Andy Summers revealed how Eric Clapton begged him to buy his ’59 Les Paul Sunburst in the ’60s. Saying he got one of the two Gibson guitars in Rose Morris, the guitarist recalled:
“Eric went and got [the other]. He got it. So, now he copies. So, we both got Les Pauls, okay? So, time moves on. Eric’s Les Paul gets stolen, and he knows I’ve got the other one. He starts calling me relentlessly.”
He shared his guitar’s condition at the time:
“Now, weirdly, this is history. I had moved over to a 58 White Telecaster. That’s what I was playing. I liked it more than the Les Paul for some reason. I don’t know, pickup set up, whatever. And he knew I had that as well. I put it under the bed. It was in a case, under the bed.”
Summers’ Les Paul had a problem, but Clapton insisted on having it to replace his stolen one:
“But, he kept calling me. ‘I don’t want to sell it. I don’t want to sell it.’ But I felt a little bit weird about it because it seemed like the back pickup didn’t work. Because none of us knew s**t about electronics. A guy could have just fixed it; one tweak and it was fine.”
In the end, The Police’s guitarist sold the guitar and mentioned the price by saying:
“I kept resisting it. But finally, he called me so many times that I actually agreed to sell it with some, you know, forgiving. I didn’t feel great about it, but he just really wanted. So, we agreed on a price. I charged him 200 pounds for it. It’s worth about 2 million now. Who knew?”
Gibson Guitars Didn’t Work For Summers The Way They Did For Clapton
The Les Paul guitar, originally bought for around $80, was Clapton’s main guitar with Cream from 1966 to 1967 and was used on the ‘Blues Breakers’ album. But Summers wasn’t a fan of that model, as he revealed in his previous interviews.
Appearing on ‘Everyone Loves Guitar’ a few months ago, the guitarist explained:
“I didn’t really take to the Les Paul; there was something wrong with mine. It seems to be so symbolic; I sold him my Les Paul, and I got a white ’58 Telecaster. In London, at the time, it was a pretty radical-looking guitar.”
Commenting on the guitar, he went on:
“The Les Paul was a heavy, weird little guitar, with this really overdriven sound. I think, in my case, the back pickup wasn’t quite right, although it didn’t seem to bother Eric [Clapton] at all.”
The ex-Police member also reflected on the guitar culture in the ’60s London and claimed Gibson couldn’t match Fender’s popularity until introducing the ES-335. He explained:
“Somewhere in there, before I went to London, the ES-335 had arrived, which was a fantastic breakthrough. It was finally like Gibson got it right. They made the Les Paul, but the Stratocaster is sort of the ultimate guitar; it’s perfect. Leo Fender got that right.”
You can check out Andy Summers’ recent interview in the video below.