While the Fender company boasts its definitive players, so do arch-rivals Gibson. Although the lines are now blurred, traditionally, both companies occupied different sonic realms, with the former masters of trebly palettes and the latter the go-to for musicians crafting heavier sounds due to the grit of their humbuckers. This means that on Fender’s side of the fence, musicians such as Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix typify their work, whereas on the other hand, Jimmy Page and Slash are two of the most essential axemen.
Of course, these names are just a few players, but they give a flavour of the discrepancies in sounds that both companies are famous for. Concentrating on Guns N’ Roses man Slash, he is one of the fretboard maestros inextricable from the Les Paul and has used it to create many highlights that have been crossover hits, such as ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’, ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ and ‘Paradise City’.
Although he emerged in the late 1980s, Slash is a fascinating guitarist because he was always more spiritually aligned with the classic rock players that inspired him as a child than the hair-metal names he was often associated with in his early career. Although he was a great fan of the dynamic fusion of Fender Stratocaster wielder Beck, the Londoner’s Gibson-utilising contemporaries spoke to him on a much deeper artistic level. First shown the way into rock by his parents, who were aficionados of the 1960s and ’70s guitar music, Slash would soon be particularly galvanised by the work of many Les Paul users.
Establishing a stadium-filling sound on his Les Paul, aided by distortion and atmospheric effects such as reverb and delay, Slash sought to emulate the famous players of the model that influenced him when picking up the guitar. While Keith Richards, Billy Gibbons, and even Eric Clapton were the first to show him the model’s thunderous sound, one resonated more than any other: Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page.
Page is credited with singlehandedly making rock more expansive than it has ever been. Although he conceived his idea of all-encompassing, trance-like sounds when playing in The Yardbirds, it was after he formed Led Zeppelin out of their ashes that he started to refine his concept and fully realise it. The jump between the blues-rock of the group’s early days to everlasting moments such as ‘Stairway to Heaven’, ‘Rain Song’ and ‘Kashmir’ is tremendous.
However, for Slash, one Page and Zeppelin moment – ‘Whole Lotta Love’ from 1969’s Led Zeppelin II – changed his perception of rock music forever. “I specifically remember hearing ‘Whole Lotta Love’ from Led Zeppelin II when I was seven years old,” he once recalled to Total Guitarist. “I attributed that sound – from what I felt was the coolest record I’d ever heard at that point in my life – to the Les Paul…I knew it was a Les Paul making those guitar tones because I saw pictures of Jimmy Page holding one – so that’s what made me associate the Les Paul with that kind of sound.”
Slash also admitted that he believes his long affinity with the Les Paul is inextricable from Led Zeppelin. In his early years, he experimented with a variety of guitars but ended up returning to the Gibson due to its tone. He has used it ever since, crafting moments that sit next to Page and Led Zeppelin’s in the story of the instrument.
