The history and images of my 1957 Les Paul Special

Below you see me in 1967 holding a 1957 Gibson Les Paul Special guitar that has a long history. I purchased it for $100 from another local musician. It was the third guitar that I used while playing in “The Institution”, a northern New Jersey garage band that I co-founded with Richard Lester, J. Howard Duff, and Marvin Coopersmith. This is a one-of-a-kind guitar. Originally the body was in TV Yellow, which was then sanded down by its previous owner and stained dark brown prior to my purchasing it.

Many years later, I ran across an artist named Matt Held, who was then known for his paintings of individuals’ Facebook profile portraits. At that time I was working at Haskins Laboratories and we had recently moved from our location at 270 Crown Street in New Haven a block away to 300 George Street. A portion of the space was designed to support periodic art shows. Artist Debbie Hesse curated the show “Status Update” at Haskins in July 2009. After seeing Matt’s work, I commissioned the piece shown below, which was based, in part, on the photo shown above.

Back to my 1957 Les Paul Special. In the late 1960s, The Institution was playing a lot in Greenwich Village in New York City at places like the Night Owl Cafe and Cafe Wha?, opening for acts like The Lovin’ Spoonful, Mountain, Canned Heat, etc. I met and became friendly with Dan Armstrong, creator of the Plexiglas “see-through” guitar (he is now deceased). Around 1969 I had the body altered by Dan, who resurfaced the front of the body with a blonde maple veneer with inlaid piping around the edge. The entire guitar was cleaned-up and reconditioned in 2016 by DRG Guitars in Fairfield, CT. Below is a picture of me holding the refinished and reconditioned guitar. In the photo you will also notice on the bookcase behind me a few robots from my collection. More on those at another time.

For my 70th birthday in 2019 my wife, Joette Katz, commissioned a portrait of me by the brilliant illustrator Drew Friedman, based on the photo, above. A version of this illustration has been published in Mineshaft #42. My collection of Drew’s work also includes his books, comics with his art, and several limited edition prints, such as: Charles Bukowski; Cheap Thrills: Janis Joplin and R. Crumb; Jerry Lewis: Hey Oscar; Plan 9 From Outer Space; R. Crumb at 75; The Three Stooges With Vernon Dent; and Zacherly (by the way, to complete this circle, The Institution often appeared on Zacherly’s WNJU-TV show, Disc-O-Teen, broadcasting from my birthplace, Newark. I remained a friend with John Zacherle, a wonderful man, until his death).

Thanks, Drew!!!

HOME