The guitar that Jimi Hendrix gave to Billy Gibbons

This is a story that dates back to 1968. Before the birth of the Zz Top, Billy Gibbons I made friends with Jimi Hendrix. Then Houston’s musician played in the psychedelic rock group of Moving Sidewalkswhich opened the US tour of the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Eleven years later, when the Zz Top they recorded their sixth album “Degüello”Gibbons brought out the Stratocaster that Hendrix had given him. And he played it in what many consider the best blues song of Zz Top: “A Fool for Your Stockings”.

In an interview of 2018 with Classic Rock, Billy Gibbons He recalled how that song was recorded: “Many of the songs of the Izz Top were born from an effect phrase, something improvised, and this is certainly true for” A Fool for Your Stockings “. I remember by having felt one of our friends to tell why he had fallen in love with a girl. When he pronounced the phrase, ‘I was a fool for Her Stockings’, was so sincere and so -called. I wrote it immediately and it was useful to us. It is interesting to note that, when we recorded that song, I was playing the Fender Stratocaster that Jimi Hendrix had given me when we were on tour together, for some reason the guitar did not work with the amplifier.

Go on tour with
Jimi Hendrix
It was an unforgettable period for Gibbons. THE
Moving Sidewalks
Not only did Hendrix concert opened, but also reinterprets his pieces to complete their set. Hendrix admired its brazenness.

Billy Gibbons
He also told Classic Rock as his love for blues guitar was born. “I grew up in a house where music was a constant. My father was a rather interesting and multifaceted musician who provided a fantastic sound background to my childhood. We also had a housekeeper who loved listening to the Rhythm and Blues radio stations and one day, when I was about seven years old, my father led me to the Aca Studios of Houston, where he had a business to hurry. Father made me enter, he made me sit on a chair and said: ‘I will return to take you soon’.

Gibbons described him as a decisive moment of his life. “Of course it was. Furthermore, my younger sister and I went with my mother to see a concert by Elvis Presley. And those two events, still today, are impressed in my mind. Those two events were double responsible for having given my life a certain direction. Between Elvis and BB King, I was passed off.”

The Texan musician also appointed another pair of blues musicians who had a profound influence on him. “I think it is right to say that when Muddy Waters abandoned the acoustic guitar and has finally decided to connect and give electricity to the guitar, that was a rather significant turning point. From that moment, the electrification of the blues, for me there has been no more way of going back. Sometimes, something always comes to mind that perhaps I had not caught before.

In his 2018 solo album, “The Big Bad Blues” (Read the review here), Billy Gibbons recorded two songs of Muddy Waters: “Standing Around Crying” And “Rollin ‘and Tumblin'”. In this regard, he said: “I like to enhance the virtues of the founders. We are challenged to be successful as interpreters. In those moments of silence, when you are completely only in the studio and images how those rather overwhelming moments would have been in which many of these great songs have been recorded, it is a source of inspiration. It requires a certain dose of imagination, of course, but I think this is part of the mystery of the magnetic charm of this rather simple art. ‘simple’, but in reality it is quite complex “.