Guitar Origins with Grover Jackson! Eddie's Bumblebee, Randy's V, Vai's Green Meanie!

[Music] one thing to elaborate on grover is the uh the uh charvel jackson uh where that came where it's separated and i think that had to do with the randy rhodes thing so that little part of that story would be great yeah sure we had this brand name we started making guitars and and uh called them charvel guitars and they were essentially all bolt on guitars and then randy appeared on the scene and with this little line drawing that it had on a cocktail napkin of this weird v-shaped kind of thing and our you know the success of the company at that point was so tenuous really really we were living hand to mouth and um i was afraid that this weird shaped thing might have a negative impact on the little bit of success i was having with the bolt on charvel so we decided collectively randy and i decided to make it a neck to the body guitar and i said well um i put the head on it he had the body shape and i said how about we put a different name on this i didn't say because i was afraid he might ruin my business i just said can we put a different name on it and he said sure what do you think and i go i don't know jackson and he said sure that's that's fine you're making it have your name on it makes sense and that's that original white guitar um that's still in the rhodes family is the original jackson guitar that's the first one you built that's it that's it named jackson anything that first the first thing that had a jackson name on it right the white guitar that randy's very famous for having played wow so how did you end up meeting randy how did that come about no worries randy was playing this band quite right they couldn't get arrested could not get a record deal to save their life and probably left best left aside for why that was but they just it wasn't working and uh ozzy had gotten out of black sabbath and was in pretty rough shape that's really well documented i think in sharon's book and other books that that ozzy was in rough shape and oh yeah sharon decided to try to repair his life and turn him into the prince of darkness and uh they held auditions and randy who was sort of in quiet right and sort of not in quite riot auditioned got the gig and off they went to england to record the first you know aussie record and aussie king randy came home after that record was recorded but the record had not been released here in the states had been released in europe and was doing sort of okay but randy came home to see his mom for christmas and he just called me up out of the blue and it came out on the 23rd of december i'd already turned everybody loose for the christmas holiday and so he came at about noon and and randy and i sat for 12 hours and talked we talked from noon to midnight and the the rhodes guitar was basically the original one was created that first day the idea the design the elements of what that guitar was supposed to be but then we talked about everything in the world because as much as people like to ask questions about randy i never think of him as a guitar player i always think of him as this guy that was just this really warm sweet decent person and and easiest guy in the world to like um andy played guitar he happened to play guitar really great that's great were you involved in the bumblebee at all the uh black and yellow guitar the charvel that was made for eddie i made that guitar that that and in fact it that particular guitar uh i i made that guitar i think some of the guys the shop worked on it but i put it together i set that guitar up it woke my wife at the time and i up at midnight and to inform us that the guitar had to be at paramount studios the next day for the photo shoot for the album which is the day that david apparently did some kind of a jump or something broke his ankle but uh right yeah the black and yellow guitar was 100 me for me being a little older in the 60s there was the big four uh clapton paige beck and hendrix and those guys kind of set the tone for what they changed guitar they changed guitar players they made thousands and thousands of people want to play guitar they influenced people's playing styles and nobody great guitar players between that era and ed um but nobody until ed made the impact that he did uh he he made a an absolutely indelible impact caused thousands of people to be interested in playing guitar influenced thousands of guitar players and i think to some degree if you if you've lived with the guitar your whole life and it's been important an object that you find always in your life you owe ed a tremendous debt of gratitude for that because he he really was the guy who who broke the mold and uh was the guy yeah and i don't think anybody since then has done that i mean i was around that band a lot in that in that era when they were just emerging and there was this robust local scene like i talked about a minute ago and then there was van halen i mean there was this these guys these local guys writing local music and they were good and then there was van halen yeah and it was it was night and day they were they were and i think i've said it somewhere before viciously determined to be successful um there was not a question in their mind it was just a matter of when are the pieces of the puzzle going to fall together the determination that that band exhibited in those days was just stunning to see tonight regarding the green meanie with okay so uh how did that come about how did it become a green meanie steve had been the guitar player with frank zappa and uh was not known he was he was in fact frank i think used to call him my my little italian guitar player um and uh steve is an unbelievable transcriptionist and that was one of his functions in the zappaband as i recall it that he would transcribe parts it was all written that was the way frank was frank was a genius and um he left frank's band and joined up with an old friend of mine named jimmy waldo in alcatraz and jimmy called and said hey you know we've got this ingva had left angry was the original guitar player in alcatraz and he had left and they got steve as a replacement and so jimmy calls and says hey we've got this tour two weeks and uh steve's guitar won't stay in tune we need to get a guitar and i said well come on out and they came out while they were on their way out uh to ontario i'd looked around i had nothing nothing i could sell them everything was sold we got there and i said guys i got i got nothing oh no we've got to have a guitar he can't he can't keep this current guitar in tune i said okay well come on let's get in the car and we went to my house and i had this red yellow sunburst strat that i'd built for myself and i said okay i'll allow you my guitar and you can take that off to japan and play it and then when you get back we'll make you a guitar okay that's great so off they go to japan they come back and they're back a week and i don't hear from steve and then another week goes by and i still don't hear from steve we get to about the third week and i'm going yeah i'll probably get need to get something going for steve and heck i'd like to have my guitar back and so i called him up and he says yeah you know i really love that guitar i said yes he says yeah i had elwood painted green and i says my guitar my red sunburst guitar you it's green he goes yeah i really like that guitar oh yeah i know it's a great guitar uh he says yeah i like it i said okay it's a gift you can have it and i gave it to him and um that's that's how that my guitar ended up being green and he played that guitar all the way up i think until and a couple of other guitars i made for him until he did the ibanez thing and he he's had a wonderful long successful career with ibanez and god blessing and i think he actually wore the green meanie out i don't i don't think it's actually even playable anymore because he just played the thing to death now what was was there anything particularly special about that guitar that uh was it was well actually you know what in a funny sort of way i was watching some videos last night um there was something kind of special it was a single piece ash body and i remember that [Music] two guitars came out of that piece of wood my guitar which became steve's guitar and if you go back there there's a guitar player named steve ferris it came from mr mister well he actually when i met steve he was playing with eddie money and then then later um that guitar that's in most of those mr mr videos sort of a caramel sunbursty kind of charvel that's the sister guitar to mine or steve the same piece of wood [Music] you

Channel: Tone-Talk

Views: 27,569

Keywords: Steve Vai, Van Halen, Bumblebee, Randy Rhoads, Friedman, Huzansky, Tone Talk

Id: mdBYTN4I9k8

Length: 11min 16sec (676 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 07 2020