“This was a divine intervention for me. It was everything that I was looking for”: Jake Kiszka on finding his “Beloved” Gibson SG
Greta Van Fleet’s Jake Kiszka has been reflecting on the first time he got his hands on his 1961 Gibson Les Paul SG Standard, which he affectionately nicknamed “Beloved”.
The guitar is the inspiration behind his new signature SG Standard with Gibson, which launched just last week. Crafted in Nashville and available only in limited numbers, the model retains the essence of his ’61 Les Paul SG through its contours, deep-edge bevelling, and double‐cutaway design.
READ MORE: Greta Van Fleet’s Jake Kiszka thinks that modern rock bands aren’t experimental enough: “There’s so much tunnel vision in contemporary rock records”
Speaking to MusicRadar, Kiszka recalls how the band visited the Chicago Music Exchange while on tour, back when they were just getting started. Greta Van Fleet’s manager was friends with the company’s CEO, Andrew Yonke, and arranged for Kiszka to visit what CME calls ‘The Vault’, where it keeps treasures of interesting and vintage gear.
Kiszka recalls, “It was maybe a decade ago now, about 10 years ago, Greta Van Fleet was leaving Michigan for the first time, where we’d really played shows and gigged and done all sorts of work there. It was really the first time out in North America, nationally… Setting out into the infinite horizon, trying to find manifest destiny or something.”
On his visit to The Vault, he remembers, “I was looking through all these guitars, and we were trying to pick up some gear if we could, some serious, good gear. I wasn’t really that familiar with the early ‘60s SGs. I didn’t know much about them. I stumbled upon this one,” he shares of his Beloved.
“I was just immediately mesmerised. Immediately, from the first strum, it was like a lightning bolt just hit me from above,” he continues. “I really did feel like this was sort of a divine intervention for me. It was everything that I was looking for in terms of the sound of something. I’d been searching for that my whole life up to this point.”
However, back then Kiszka didn’t have the money to afford this stunning vintage model that he’d fallen head over heels for: “There was no question I yearned to take it on the road with me. The caveat was it was a $25,000 guitar. So of course I wasn’t gonna be able to afford that being a poor kid coming out of Michigan.
“Thankfully and gratefully I’m humbled that the owner perhaps saw something in me, and us as a band, and allowed me to take it on the road. He said, ‘Do you know what? Just pay me back for it later, when you can afford it.’ And I did,” he states.
Kiszka spoke of this very story back in his episode of My Guitars & Me with Guitar.com. Speaking of the wear and tear the guitar has earned since being in his ownership, he told us: “This is what happens when you start wearing rhinestones on suits with no jacket over them. And this is what my nipples have done,” he joked. “It looks like a cutting board, doesn’t it? It’s a lot lighter than when I got it – I’ve sanded it away!”
“I’ll probably be buried with it!” he added. “There’s a piece of me in this guitar, but there’s also a piece of this guitar in me. In reality, a lot of my playing, and the way that I’ve developed playing have actually come from this very specific instrument.”
The post “This was a divine intervention for me. It was everything that I was looking for”: Jake Kiszka on finding his “Beloved” Gibson SG appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
