Back in 1996, Dave Navarro was at the top of his game. He had risen to rock star status with Jane’s Addiction, worked with artists like Janet Jackson and Nine Inch Nails, and was a few years into a new gig with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. So, naturally, Guitar World would want to catch up with him for a cover photo shoot.
This is almost where the “bizarre” story of Navarro’s Les Paul guitar, which he weilds on the cover, begins. It is certainly not where it ends.
Navarro held the Les Paul and a shotgun on the cover of Guitar World’s March 1996 issue
According to Guitar World, the legend of the Les Paul began when Navarro picked it up for a Guns ’N’ Roses audition. The audition never happened, though, and once Guitar World came around, he had already moved on to playing Ibanez, PRS, and Fender Strats.
“Years after the GNR thing, I knew that guitar was kind of leaning up against the wall,” Navarro told Guitar World, recalling the outlet’s visit to his home in ’96. “I guess the Guitar World people came to the house to do the shoot, and if you walked around my house, there’s, like, 12 guitars all over the place – and they’re all different makes and models.”
PRS Might have had something to say about that cover photo
“For some reason, I picked up that guitar and grabbed it for the shoot,” he continued. Navarro then added with a laugh, “I think, in hindsight, I was probably contractually supposed to be holding a PRS!”
The next chapter of the story introduces a new character: John Frusciante, who Navarro replaced in RHCP in 1993. “He was in detox at a hospital,” Navarro recalled. “He called me and said, ‘I’m sitting in a hospital and I don’t have a guitar. Can you loan me one?’”
“I was like, ‘I’ve got this Les Paul sitting here if you want to play that.’ I was still in the Chili Peppers at the time. And he was getting clean,” Navarro continued. “I was like, ‘I’ll come down to the hospital and bring this to you.’ So I ended up giving him that Les Paul, which is… You know, the layers here are kind of bizarre.”
The guitar didn’t remain with Frusciante for too long, because he seemingly pawned it almost immediately. “He apparently sold the guitar once he got out of rehab,” Navarro shared. “And that was that – I never saw that guitar again. That was somewhere in the ’90s.”
While the guitar was lost to the ages, its absence left space for the two men to rekindle their friendship years later
“I got a call from John, and I hadn’t talked to him in years,” Navarro continues. “I say, ‘What’s up, man?’ He goes, ‘I remember years ago, when I was in the hospital, you brought me this Les Paul, which was really nice of you. Thank you so much for that.’”
“He went, ‘I got out of detox and I sold it. I’m really sorry. I was wondering if I could come visit you.’ And I hadn’t talked to him since that day, to be honest, but he came up to my house, and he had a guitar with him.”
“He sat down, opened the case, and it was a Black Beauty. He was like, ‘I just wanted to apologize for selling your guitar. I know it’s not the same guitar, but I know you had a Black Beauty in Jane’s Addiction on the original record, and [it] got broken, and you don’t have it anymore, so I got you this.’”
So there you have it in his own words: the bizarre, twisting, and kind of sweet story about Dave Navarro’s long-lost Les Paul and how it helped him rekindle an old friendship.
The post The ‘Bizarre’ Story of Dave Navarro’s Les Paul Guitar That Disappeared After He Loaned It to John Frusciante in the 1990s appeared first on VICE.
