Mysterious Les Paul in The Vault

After visiting Jimi Hendrix’s Flying V at the Handel House Museum, I headed across Mayfair to its usual home at the Hard Rock Cafe Vault. The Vault is in the basement of the Rock Shop and used to be the bank vault for the Piccadilly branch of Coutt’s bank. Serious security, and well worth it given the range of treasures they have down there.

I actually spent most of my time talking guitarists with the chap in charge (not a fan of Steve Vai, it turned out) so I didn’t really look too closely at the exhibits. But one thing that caught my eye was a Gibson Les Paul which wasn’t labelled and nor was it in a glass case as most of the guitars are now.

It was just a nice sunburst Standard, apart from the fact that the body was incredibly thin for a Les Paul. I asked whose it was, and got a question back in return – who is the most famous player of Les Pauls? Resisting the urge to say Les Paul, I replied Jimmy Page and this was apparently the right answer.

The story is that after years of playing heavy Les Pauls, Jimmy had a lighter one made to save his back. This is all very plausible except I’m sure it would be documented (the intersection of Les Paul enthusiasts and Led Zeppelin fans being pretty much the definition of obsessive) and I can’t find any reference to it. It’s not even mentioned in the Hard Rock Cafe’s memorabilia database although that may be because it’s newly acquired.

Surely it would just sound wrong anyway? I’m starting to doubt my eyes now. If anybody can help clear this up, the domain is justfluff.com and my name is phil, I’m sure you can construct an email address from that.