“Girls in the crowd would want to know who it was. I’d point to my wedding ring and they’d melt!”: Joe Perry on his custom Gibson BB King “Billie” Lucille
With an often-cited collection of over 600 instruments, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry is as prolific a guitar collector as he is a riff writer.
And in a new interview with Guitar World, Perry highlights some of his favourites from his collection, including the custom Gibson BB King Lucille he had designed to celebrate his longtime wife, Billie Paulette Montgomery. The guitar – which features a painting of Billie’s face on its lower bout – has attracted considerable attention when he has brought it out on stage over the years.
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“I got that in the ‘90s,” Perry explains. “The main reason for that guitar is that I love history, and I was looking back and fascinated by what they call ‘nose art’. Pilots would have artwork on the nose of their planes in World Wars I and II, and it would be pictures of their favourite movie starlet or their wife, and they’d name the plane after them.
“I thought, ‘Why not do that with my guitar?’ That was the main reason I picked that body style – the BB King Lucille body. It doesn’t have F-holes; I wanted something with plenty of room for the artwork.”
The artwork – designed and painted by Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer’s drum tech John Douglas – was inspired by a number of polaroid photos Perry took of Billie, who the guitar came as a massive surprise to when it was first revealed to her.
“She had no idea this was going on!” Perry continues, reflecting on the moment she saw it. “Billie just stood there for a second, and they came out with this guitar case and said, ‘Close your eyes.’ We opened it up, and she turned beet red.
“Long story short, she wouldn’t come out when I’d put the guitar on; she’d kind of leave the side of the stage because she was so embarrassed about it. She’s not somebody who looks for the spotlight, but she got used to it.”
Perry continues: “Sometimes I would stand out at the end of the ramp, and the girls in the crowd would point to the picture on the guitar and want to know who it was. I’d point to my wedding ring, and they would melt. They thought it was so romantic!”
The guitar wasn’t just a DIY job, though; it came as an official collaborative work between Joe Perry, John Douglas and Gibson.
“I took some pictures of Billie with a polaroid and got the guitar from Gibson, who were in on the plot,” Perry recalls. “I had them paint it pearl white but without the final touches so that John could paint it.
“There’s a picture on the front of the guitar and on the back, and I picked white because I thought the artwork would stand out. Again, I was driven by the visuals. [laughs] After John painted it, it went back to Gibson, and they put the neck and their touches on it and finished it with the electronics… That happened in Nashville, where I got to go to the factory and check out the stuff at the Custom Shop.
The post “Girls in the crowd would want to know who it was. I’d point to my wedding ring and they’d melt!”: Joe Perry on his custom Gibson BB King “Billie” Lucille appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
