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Lot Essay
THE PINK JACKSON SOLOIST KNOWN AS “TINA” – JEFF BECK’S PRIMARY RECORDING GUITAR THROUGH THE MID 1980S
Famous for its jagged autograph carved by one Tina Turner at the treble bout, Jeff Beck acquired this hot pink Jackson Soloist from custom guitar luthier Grover Jackson and played it throughout the mid 1980s, including for appearances at the ARMS benefit concerts, session recordings with Tina Turner, Rod Stewart and Mick Jagger, and to record his 1985 studio album Flash with Nile Rodgers.
The pink Soloist was not the first guitar that Grover Jackson had built for Jeff Beck. Interviewed by Steve Rosen in March 1982, Jackson detailed the original hot rod inspired model that he presented to Jeff during the U.S. leg of his There And Back Tour in 1980: ‘Beck has been my personal hero since about 1966... [Jeff’s] two 32s [Fords] have flames on them… I said, “I've got to do somethin' for this asshole.” So I made a strat body, two humbuckings in it, painted it with flames… I got the guitar done, put it together, took it down there [the Greek Theater, Los Angeles] and went to the stage before the show… I very clumsily said “this is not an endorsement trip or anything; you've been my hero since I was a kid and I am in a position in my life where I have some little tiny way to say thank you for the music that's meant a lot to me. If you like it, fine, if you wanna break it, fine.”' Evidently the guitar was a hit with Jeff, as by 1983 he had placed an order for a custom pink Jackson Soloist, which featured neck-through body construction, a 24-fret neck, double-locking tremolo, and Seymour Duncan’s Alnico II pickups, the middle one being a RWRP reverse winding, reverse polarity, so that you get humbucking in the 2 and 4 positions on a 5-way switch. Although admitting to Jas Obrecht of Guitar Player that 'Jeff was very hard to get information out of as far as what he wanted,' Jackson noted that 'Jeff likes his necks thin and narrow, 1 5⁄8" at the nut sort of like an early-'60s Strat, but a little thinner in the back.' In the first year of production under the Jackson trademark, just 34 guitars were built with a JXXXX serial number, of which this was number 28 and the first pink Soloist.
Jackson told us that he flew to New York to deliver the guitar to Jeff himself before the final ARMS Benefit Concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City on 9 December 1983. The pink Soloist made its first public appearance on stage that night when Jeff, together with the entire star-studded line-up of musicians, including Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ronnie Wood, Andy Fairweather Low, Bill Wyman, Kenney Jones, Charlie Watts and Ray Cooper, assembled for a finale performance of Lead Belly’s ‘Goodnight, Irene’. The ARMS concerts, in support of ex-Faces bassist Ronnie Lane and his appeal for Action into Research for Multiple Sclerosis, were notable for bringing together all three former Yardbirds guitarists - Clapton, Beck and Page – for the first time on stage. ‘The whole thing was so un-starlike,’ Jeff told Gene Santoro for Guitar World in 1985, ‘nobody played the big star, and we just loved being on the road because A) it was a good cause and B) it was a short tour, a one-time special thing, so we just got in and enjoyed the hell out of it… Because it was Jimmy, Eric and myself for Ronnie Lane, the whole thing seemed to really mean something. It was an amazing experience all over.’ When Santoro grilled him on the subject of his favourite guitars in those days, Jeff named the Jackson: ‘I've also got a Grover Jackson which is pretty nice – it's a bit heavy metal looking but it's bloody good. It goes up to high C, which you can scream and it sounds almost like a whistle… it's almost beyond human hearing.’
The guitar was next seen when Beck played a mini set with Stevie Ray Vaughan at the CBS Records Convention in Honolulu, Hawaii, on 19 February 1984, where the duo performed a cover of Lonnie Mack’s ‘Wham!’ and the instrumental ‘Jeff’s Boogie’ from the Yardbirds’ eponymous 1966 album known as Roger the Engineer. As cited in Craig Hopkins’ Stevie Ray Vaughan: Day by Day, Night After Night - His Final Years, 1983-1990, Vaughan said of the performance: ‘[Beck] did this solo in Hawaii that night that was unbelievable. It actually took me watching it on videotape for about a month to really grasp what he played. And whether he’s pulling our leg and he really knows what he’s doing before he does it, I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. But he finished this solo and got this big grin on his face and stuck his hand in his pocket and stood there for a while like, “You can put that one in the bank.” It was amazing.’
Jeff was apparently in high demand to work with a roster of notable artists on studio sessions throughout 1984. ‘Who’s gonna say no when I got the call? I’d be proud that someone remembered I was even alive,’ Beck later joked to Total Guitar about his numerous guest appearances. Perhaps most surprising was a collaboration with Rod Stewart, their first time working together since the breakup of the Jeff Beck Group, on a cover of the 1965 Curtis Mayfield composition ‘People Get Ready’, which would be released as the lead single from Jeff’s 1985 album Flash, peaking at no.48 on the Billboard Hot 100. Explaining how the reunion came about, Jeff told Gene Santoro: ‘I kept bumping into him in different places in Los Angeles. He was always friendly and saying, “Well, when are we going to do something together?” So I said, "Put your money where your mouth is." So then he organized the studio and we went in and did a thing called "People Get Ready." That turned out really well, and Warner Bros. and everybody just went crazy.’ Jeff played the pink Jackson to record guitar parts for three tracks on Rod’s 1984 album Camouflage, including the hit single ‘Infatuation’. ‘That album was done with the Jackson,’ Jeff confirmed to Guitar Player in 1985. ‘It was the only guitar I was using at the time.’ By the time Jeff had reunited with Rod to shoot the Hitchcock inspired music video for ‘Infatuation’, in which Jeff was seen hammering out his lead solo on the pink Jackson – at one moment even playing the guitar behind his head – the instrument’s treble bout displayed the indelible autograph of Tina Turner. With the enthusiasm of Rod’s label behind them, the pair even attempted to tour together in support of Camouflage. ‘The problem with this, from the outset,’ wrote Rod in his 2013 memoir, ‘was that it all too obviously cast Jeff in a supporting role, which he was pretty much guaranteed to hate, however handsomely remunerated. The tour was set for 74 dates over four months. Behind the scenes, a lot of people were muttering and saying, “This is doomed — he won’t last two shows.” But they were all wrong. He lasted three. And then he left, saying something about how the audience were all housewives, which was a little bit rude of the old scamp.’ Rare photographs of the opening night of the tour at the Reno Events Center in Reno, Nevada, on 3 July 1984, show Rod and Jeff reunited on stage, the latter wielding his pink Jackson Soloist, before Jeff quit the tour only ten days later.
‘In 1984, I played guitar for Tina Turner on “Private Dancer”’, Jeff recalled in his 2016 limited edition book BECK01. ‘It was quite a heavy session, because they played everything so quietly. I wasn't used to that; we'd always have this stuff blasting out. I found my way through the track and when Tina came in, she said she'd just do a guide vocal. Then she sang it all in one take, that was it. I thought, 'If this is the standard, I'd better pull something out of the bag: I played, and when Tina came back she said she loved it. Tina asked who she needed to see about payment. I said she didn't need to pay me, she could just sign my guitar.’ When interviewed by Jas Obrecht for Guitar Player not long after the session in 1985, Jeff revealed how the autograph became an engraving: ‘She got out this green felt pen, and, of course, it wouldn't stay on a polished, painted guitar with grease all over it. So she said, "Do you want it to stay there for a real long time?" I said, "Yeah. Write it into the woodwork. Go with it." And she got a dagger out of her bag – we call it a flick knife; you call it a switchblade – a very evil-looking thing. First of all, she started chipping away, trying to make a nice engraved job. I said, "Never mind that. Just write your name." She just tore into it and rubbed nail polish on it.’ Although the Yardbirds had toured with Ike and Tina Turner in 1966, Jeff had been too scared to speak to Tina at the time. A devoted fan, he was thrilled to finally have the opportunity to work with her, and to walk away with a permanent souvenir. ‘When Tina Turner’s name came up,’ Jeff admitted to Musician magazine, ‘I would have bicycled to where she wanted me to play.’ The Soloist featured on both ‘Private Dancer’ and ‘Steel Claw’, with a pair of Roland digital echoes adding to the unique guitar sound on the former. Released in May 1984 and certified platinum within a month, Private Dancer was a landmark album for Turner, propelling her to solo stardom.
Later that year, Mick Jagger flew Jeff out to Compass Point Studios in Nassau for three weeks to play on his debut solo album She’s The Boss. ‘It was a little like a world tour because Mick recorded all over the place,’ Jeff recalled in BECK01. ‘I was invited to his house for a little drinks party, and Mick wouldn't let me go until everyone else had gone. He said, “Listen. You wanna do some recording?” I was just lucky to be in demand, I suppose!’ The pink Soloist was again Jeff’s guitar of choice for the majority of recording duties on the seven tracks he contributed. ’I remember using the same setup again – the pink guitar – as well as an old Tele,’ Jeff told Guitar Player. ‘We had a drummer and a bass player, and we just played like a live band… We built the whole lot. There was nothing done beforehand. He had like 16 different versions – all demos of the same tunes with different pickup bands that he'd use.’ Released in February 1985, both the album and lead single ‘Just Another Night’ became worldwide hits.
Before Nassau, Jeff had begun working on his fifth studio album, and now resumed the sessions with producer Nile Rodgers at the Power Station in New York. The album was intended to be Jeff’s most commercial release to date, a return to rock after his 70s jazz fusion era, with Nile brought in to add the pop factor. ‘At that time it just seemed the right thing to do, to try and get a sneaky hit album with Nile,’ Jeff told Steve Rosen in 1989. ‘I'm not making any bones about it; we were after a hit album.’ Jeff was even persuaded to sing on a couple of tracks. ‘It was Nile Rodgers. He insisted.’ Despite the album’s success – Rolling Stone called it ‘one of Beck’s best ever,’ – Jeff had found the precision production stifling. ‘I got so frustrated,’ he told Obrecht, ‘because there were very few slots that I could get in my style. With "Ambitious," I thought, "Well, God, I hope there's a slice of me at the end of this pie."’ Recorded with the Jackson Soloist, lead single ‘Ambitious’ was a funky rhythmic strut, with vocals by Jimmy Hall, cut with Jeff’s squealing solos and fills. Jeff broke it down for Guitar Player in 1985: ‘The parts that might sound like slide are done with a whammy bar on a Jackson Soloist… I just smashed the guitar and hit the whammy arm… This guitar has so much movement in the whammy arm, you could almost depress an octave. It's a pink Jackson Soloist with "Tina Turner" written on it. It has a Kahler whammy, and I used it for most of the solos on the album. It's the first one Grover Jackson built me.’ Jeff confirms that ‘the old pink demon’ [the Jackson Soloist] was also used on the track ‘Night After Night’, where he laces whammy with country style fingerpicking. ‘In one place, I play a descending trill with whammy, and then swoop up with the finger while the string is still sounding. I didn't move the whammy while I was doing that – I just slid my finger right up the string.’ Jeff conceded to Musician magazine’s Scott Isler that ‘there were a couple of good things in [Flash]: "Escape," which Jan Hammer wrote, got me a Grammy, and "People Get Ready." People remember those two.’
As Jeff became disenchanted with the Kahler tremolo, he would switch to his new orange Soloist with Floyd Rose tremolo (see next lot) to promote the album. Yet as of 2009, when the guitar appeared in the Robert M. Knight documentary Rock Prophecies, “Tina” still held her place in Jeff’s home studio guitar rack. Grover Jackson told us that of all the wonderful artists that he had the privilege to work with, Jeff was the king. ‘There’s nobody on the planet like him, you know?’ he posits to guitar historian Tony Bacon. ‘Those notes he plays don’t appear on a regular guitar! It’s more like sonic sculpture with Jeff. So it was a real highlight for me to make guitars for him.’
JACKSON GUITARS
Charvel’s Guitar Repair shop was founded Wayne Charvel in 1974 in San Dimas, California, primarily repairing Fender instruments which were no longer covered by the Fender warranty. In addition to the repair business, Charvel began selling and producing after-market parts based on vintage Fender and Gibson guitars. Grover Jackson joined Charvel’s business in 1977 and in 1978 the financially stressed Charvel sold his interest in the business to the 29-year-old Jackson.
Jackson’s first guitar with a Jackson logo on the headstock was a custom solid-body electric for Randy Rhoads in 1980. With a ‘through neck’ body design and asymmetrical ‘V’ shape it would be the beginning of the ‘pointy’ aesthetics of 1980s guitar design. With this instrument and following Charvel's success working with Eddie van Halen, the idea of a Jackson brand of guitars alongside the Charvel name was born, and business increased exponentially. Moving from a 1200 sq. ft. to 2400 sq. ft. workshop in Glendora, California in 1980, the business had expanded to require 7200 sq. ft. within two years.
Word travelled fast among local and touring professional Heavy Metal rock performers that the Jackson/Charvel shop offered the musician ‘..an infinite variety of opportunities to participate in the design of your instrument.’ Before long, marquee performers like Eddie Ojeda of Twisted Sister, Warren DeMartini of Ratt and Jeff Beck were darkening the doors of this Southern Cal guitar workshop.
Along with the ‘through neck’ design, Jackson guitars became known for offering bespoke guitar builds where the possibilities were unlimited and none more so than in the custom paint jobs for which they became celebrated. Embracing the highly skilled local community of custom auto finish artisans in Southern California, Jackson guitars would be seen sporting bright and iridescent colours accented by intricate pin striping. It became evident that Jackson's custom colour finish department had the skills that no other guitar manufacturer could match. The always present cultural ethos of the American Hot Rod and the electric guitar was now physically evident, and inseparable.
Famous for its jagged autograph carved by one Tina Turner at the treble bout, Jeff Beck acquired this hot pink Jackson Soloist from custom guitar luthier Grover Jackson and played it throughout the mid 1980s, including for appearances at the ARMS benefit concerts, session recordings with Tina Turner, Rod Stewart and Mick Jagger, and to record his 1985 studio album Flash with Nile Rodgers.
The pink Soloist was not the first guitar that Grover Jackson had built for Jeff Beck. Interviewed by Steve Rosen in March 1982, Jackson detailed the original hot rod inspired model that he presented to Jeff during the U.S. leg of his There And Back Tour in 1980: ‘Beck has been my personal hero since about 1966... [Jeff’s] two 32s [Fords] have flames on them… I said, “I've got to do somethin' for this asshole.” So I made a strat body, two humbuckings in it, painted it with flames… I got the guitar done, put it together, took it down there [the Greek Theater, Los Angeles] and went to the stage before the show… I very clumsily said “this is not an endorsement trip or anything; you've been my hero since I was a kid and I am in a position in my life where I have some little tiny way to say thank you for the music that's meant a lot to me. If you like it, fine, if you wanna break it, fine.”' Evidently the guitar was a hit with Jeff, as by 1983 he had placed an order for a custom pink Jackson Soloist, which featured neck-through body construction, a 24-fret neck, double-locking tremolo, and Seymour Duncan’s Alnico II pickups, the middle one being a RWRP reverse winding, reverse polarity, so that you get humbucking in the 2 and 4 positions on a 5-way switch. Although admitting to Jas Obrecht of Guitar Player that 'Jeff was very hard to get information out of as far as what he wanted,' Jackson noted that 'Jeff likes his necks thin and narrow, 1 5⁄8" at the nut sort of like an early-'60s Strat, but a little thinner in the back.' In the first year of production under the Jackson trademark, just 34 guitars were built with a JXXXX serial number, of which this was number 28 and the first pink Soloist.
Jackson told us that he flew to New York to deliver the guitar to Jeff himself before the final ARMS Benefit Concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City on 9 December 1983. The pink Soloist made its first public appearance on stage that night when Jeff, together with the entire star-studded line-up of musicians, including Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ronnie Wood, Andy Fairweather Low, Bill Wyman, Kenney Jones, Charlie Watts and Ray Cooper, assembled for a finale performance of Lead Belly’s ‘Goodnight, Irene’. The ARMS concerts, in support of ex-Faces bassist Ronnie Lane and his appeal for Action into Research for Multiple Sclerosis, were notable for bringing together all three former Yardbirds guitarists - Clapton, Beck and Page – for the first time on stage. ‘The whole thing was so un-starlike,’ Jeff told Gene Santoro for Guitar World in 1985, ‘nobody played the big star, and we just loved being on the road because A) it was a good cause and B) it was a short tour, a one-time special thing, so we just got in and enjoyed the hell out of it… Because it was Jimmy, Eric and myself for Ronnie Lane, the whole thing seemed to really mean something. It was an amazing experience all over.’ When Santoro grilled him on the subject of his favourite guitars in those days, Jeff named the Jackson: ‘I've also got a Grover Jackson which is pretty nice – it's a bit heavy metal looking but it's bloody good. It goes up to high C, which you can scream and it sounds almost like a whistle… it's almost beyond human hearing.’
The guitar was next seen when Beck played a mini set with Stevie Ray Vaughan at the CBS Records Convention in Honolulu, Hawaii, on 19 February 1984, where the duo performed a cover of Lonnie Mack’s ‘Wham!’ and the instrumental ‘Jeff’s Boogie’ from the Yardbirds’ eponymous 1966 album known as Roger the Engineer. As cited in Craig Hopkins’ Stevie Ray Vaughan: Day by Day, Night After Night - His Final Years, 1983-1990, Vaughan said of the performance: ‘[Beck] did this solo in Hawaii that night that was unbelievable. It actually took me watching it on videotape for about a month to really grasp what he played. And whether he’s pulling our leg and he really knows what he’s doing before he does it, I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. But he finished this solo and got this big grin on his face and stuck his hand in his pocket and stood there for a while like, “You can put that one in the bank.” It was amazing.’
Jeff was apparently in high demand to work with a roster of notable artists on studio sessions throughout 1984. ‘Who’s gonna say no when I got the call? I’d be proud that someone remembered I was even alive,’ Beck later joked to Total Guitar about his numerous guest appearances. Perhaps most surprising was a collaboration with Rod Stewart, their first time working together since the breakup of the Jeff Beck Group, on a cover of the 1965 Curtis Mayfield composition ‘People Get Ready’, which would be released as the lead single from Jeff’s 1985 album Flash, peaking at no.48 on the Billboard Hot 100. Explaining how the reunion came about, Jeff told Gene Santoro: ‘I kept bumping into him in different places in Los Angeles. He was always friendly and saying, “Well, when are we going to do something together?” So I said, "Put your money where your mouth is." So then he organized the studio and we went in and did a thing called "People Get Ready." That turned out really well, and Warner Bros. and everybody just went crazy.’ Jeff played the pink Jackson to record guitar parts for three tracks on Rod’s 1984 album Camouflage, including the hit single ‘Infatuation’. ‘That album was done with the Jackson,’ Jeff confirmed to Guitar Player in 1985. ‘It was the only guitar I was using at the time.’ By the time Jeff had reunited with Rod to shoot the Hitchcock inspired music video for ‘Infatuation’, in which Jeff was seen hammering out his lead solo on the pink Jackson – at one moment even playing the guitar behind his head – the instrument’s treble bout displayed the indelible autograph of Tina Turner. With the enthusiasm of Rod’s label behind them, the pair even attempted to tour together in support of Camouflage. ‘The problem with this, from the outset,’ wrote Rod in his 2013 memoir, ‘was that it all too obviously cast Jeff in a supporting role, which he was pretty much guaranteed to hate, however handsomely remunerated. The tour was set for 74 dates over four months. Behind the scenes, a lot of people were muttering and saying, “This is doomed — he won’t last two shows.” But they were all wrong. He lasted three. And then he left, saying something about how the audience were all housewives, which was a little bit rude of the old scamp.’ Rare photographs of the opening night of the tour at the Reno Events Center in Reno, Nevada, on 3 July 1984, show Rod and Jeff reunited on stage, the latter wielding his pink Jackson Soloist, before Jeff quit the tour only ten days later.
‘In 1984, I played guitar for Tina Turner on “Private Dancer”’, Jeff recalled in his 2016 limited edition book BECK01. ‘It was quite a heavy session, because they played everything so quietly. I wasn't used to that; we'd always have this stuff blasting out. I found my way through the track and when Tina came in, she said she'd just do a guide vocal. Then she sang it all in one take, that was it. I thought, 'If this is the standard, I'd better pull something out of the bag: I played, and when Tina came back she said she loved it. Tina asked who she needed to see about payment. I said she didn't need to pay me, she could just sign my guitar.’ When interviewed by Jas Obrecht for Guitar Player not long after the session in 1985, Jeff revealed how the autograph became an engraving: ‘She got out this green felt pen, and, of course, it wouldn't stay on a polished, painted guitar with grease all over it. So she said, "Do you want it to stay there for a real long time?" I said, "Yeah. Write it into the woodwork. Go with it." And she got a dagger out of her bag – we call it a flick knife; you call it a switchblade – a very evil-looking thing. First of all, she started chipping away, trying to make a nice engraved job. I said, "Never mind that. Just write your name." She just tore into it and rubbed nail polish on it.’ Although the Yardbirds had toured with Ike and Tina Turner in 1966, Jeff had been too scared to speak to Tina at the time. A devoted fan, he was thrilled to finally have the opportunity to work with her, and to walk away with a permanent souvenir. ‘When Tina Turner’s name came up,’ Jeff admitted to Musician magazine, ‘I would have bicycled to where she wanted me to play.’ The Soloist featured on both ‘Private Dancer’ and ‘Steel Claw’, with a pair of Roland digital echoes adding to the unique guitar sound on the former. Released in May 1984 and certified platinum within a month, Private Dancer was a landmark album for Turner, propelling her to solo stardom.
Later that year, Mick Jagger flew Jeff out to Compass Point Studios in Nassau for three weeks to play on his debut solo album She’s The Boss. ‘It was a little like a world tour because Mick recorded all over the place,’ Jeff recalled in BECK01. ‘I was invited to his house for a little drinks party, and Mick wouldn't let me go until everyone else had gone. He said, “Listen. You wanna do some recording?” I was just lucky to be in demand, I suppose!’ The pink Soloist was again Jeff’s guitar of choice for the majority of recording duties on the seven tracks he contributed. ’I remember using the same setup again – the pink guitar – as well as an old Tele,’ Jeff told Guitar Player. ‘We had a drummer and a bass player, and we just played like a live band… We built the whole lot. There was nothing done beforehand. He had like 16 different versions – all demos of the same tunes with different pickup bands that he'd use.’ Released in February 1985, both the album and lead single ‘Just Another Night’ became worldwide hits.
Before Nassau, Jeff had begun working on his fifth studio album, and now resumed the sessions with producer Nile Rodgers at the Power Station in New York. The album was intended to be Jeff’s most commercial release to date, a return to rock after his 70s jazz fusion era, with Nile brought in to add the pop factor. ‘At that time it just seemed the right thing to do, to try and get a sneaky hit album with Nile,’ Jeff told Steve Rosen in 1989. ‘I'm not making any bones about it; we were after a hit album.’ Jeff was even persuaded to sing on a couple of tracks. ‘It was Nile Rodgers. He insisted.’ Despite the album’s success – Rolling Stone called it ‘one of Beck’s best ever,’ – Jeff had found the precision production stifling. ‘I got so frustrated,’ he told Obrecht, ‘because there were very few slots that I could get in my style. With "Ambitious," I thought, "Well, God, I hope there's a slice of me at the end of this pie."’ Recorded with the Jackson Soloist, lead single ‘Ambitious’ was a funky rhythmic strut, with vocals by Jimmy Hall, cut with Jeff’s squealing solos and fills. Jeff broke it down for Guitar Player in 1985: ‘The parts that might sound like slide are done with a whammy bar on a Jackson Soloist… I just smashed the guitar and hit the whammy arm… This guitar has so much movement in the whammy arm, you could almost depress an octave. It's a pink Jackson Soloist with "Tina Turner" written on it. It has a Kahler whammy, and I used it for most of the solos on the album. It's the first one Grover Jackson built me.’ Jeff confirms that ‘the old pink demon’ [the Jackson Soloist] was also used on the track ‘Night After Night’, where he laces whammy with country style fingerpicking. ‘In one place, I play a descending trill with whammy, and then swoop up with the finger while the string is still sounding. I didn't move the whammy while I was doing that – I just slid my finger right up the string.’ Jeff conceded to Musician magazine’s Scott Isler that ‘there were a couple of good things in [Flash]: "Escape," which Jan Hammer wrote, got me a Grammy, and "People Get Ready." People remember those two.’
As Jeff became disenchanted with the Kahler tremolo, he would switch to his new orange Soloist with Floyd Rose tremolo (see next lot) to promote the album. Yet as of 2009, when the guitar appeared in the Robert M. Knight documentary Rock Prophecies, “Tina” still held her place in Jeff’s home studio guitar rack. Grover Jackson told us that of all the wonderful artists that he had the privilege to work with, Jeff was the king. ‘There’s nobody on the planet like him, you know?’ he posits to guitar historian Tony Bacon. ‘Those notes he plays don’t appear on a regular guitar! It’s more like sonic sculpture with Jeff. So it was a real highlight for me to make guitars for him.’
JACKSON GUITARS
Charvel’s Guitar Repair shop was founded Wayne Charvel in 1974 in San Dimas, California, primarily repairing Fender instruments which were no longer covered by the Fender warranty. In addition to the repair business, Charvel began selling and producing after-market parts based on vintage Fender and Gibson guitars. Grover Jackson joined Charvel’s business in 1977 and in 1978 the financially stressed Charvel sold his interest in the business to the 29-year-old Jackson.
Jackson’s first guitar with a Jackson logo on the headstock was a custom solid-body electric for Randy Rhoads in 1980. With a ‘through neck’ body design and asymmetrical ‘V’ shape it would be the beginning of the ‘pointy’ aesthetics of 1980s guitar design. With this instrument and following Charvel's success working with Eddie van Halen, the idea of a Jackson brand of guitars alongside the Charvel name was born, and business increased exponentially. Moving from a 1200 sq. ft. to 2400 sq. ft. workshop in Glendora, California in 1980, the business had expanded to require 7200 sq. ft. within two years.
Word travelled fast among local and touring professional Heavy Metal rock performers that the Jackson/Charvel shop offered the musician ‘..an infinite variety of opportunities to participate in the design of your instrument.’ Before long, marquee performers like Eddie Ojeda of Twisted Sister, Warren DeMartini of Ratt and Jeff Beck were darkening the doors of this Southern Cal guitar workshop.
Along with the ‘through neck’ design, Jackson guitars became known for offering bespoke guitar builds where the possibilities were unlimited and none more so than in the custom paint jobs for which they became celebrated. Embracing the highly skilled local community of custom auto finish artisans in Southern California, Jackson guitars would be seen sporting bright and iridescent colours accented by intricate pin striping. It became evident that Jackson's custom colour finish department had the skills that no other guitar manufacturer could match. The always present cultural ethos of the American Hot Rod and the electric guitar was now physically evident, and inseparable.