John Jorgenson Talks About Django, Telecasters and Disneyland

by Rick Landers

The superlatives always fly when guitarists start talking about multi-instrumentalist and guitar master John Jorgenson.  Anyone who’s had the good fortune to catch him on tour not only experience an awe-inspiring performance, but also get chance to discover an up tempo level of professionalism coupled with a gentleman who’s easy going and gracious.

There’s a chance those of you who went to Disneyland in Anaheim, California a few decades back may have bumped into John or saw him as he performed on the pavement of that epicenter of entertainment ala Americana.

He was young, earning his chops and preparing for bigger things. And it didn’t take long for Jorgenson to share the stage with Chris Hilman, who’s time with the Byrds is now legendary.  John joined Chris to form The Desert Rose Band and while with them Jorgenson racked up three Academy of  Country Music (ACM) awards as “Guitarist of the Year”.

He joined forces with Will Ray and Jerry Donahue in the early ’90s to form a trio called The Hellecasters and out of the box, their debut album, Return of the Hellecasters (1993),  won Guitar Player Magazine’s “Album of the Year” and “Country Album of the Year” awards.

Most of us recognize John Jorgenson as a world-class Gypsy style guitarist, but what many don’t know is his musical talent surfaces on the mandolin, mandocello,  bassoon, the upright bass, Dobro, pedal steel and the saxophone.  With enough arms, the guy could be his own orchestra.

Fortunately for us he’s found some other outstanding and swinging musicians that make up his John Jorgenson Quintent, including: Kevin Nolan (guitar); Jason Arnick (violin); Simon Planting (upright bass) and Rick Reed (percussion).

John’s shared the stage and recorded with some of the world’s most highly respected musicians including: Tommy Emmanuel; Vince Gill; Brad Paisley; Bob Dylan, Elton John, The Byrds, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Albert Lee, Barbara Streisand, Bob Seger, Bonnie Raitt, Roy Orbison, Luciano Pavarotti and a host of  magnificent others.

But, as often as not, we like to watch John perform solo, with his Saga Gitane guitar and be spellbound by his performances that are, at once, powerful and nuanced.

Guitar International met with John while he was in Washington, D.C. playing a gig. We talked “guitar talk” that included discussion about Django Rheinhardt, the Desert Rose Band, Telecasters, playing technique, Elton John, the feature film  A Walk in the Clouds, where he played the character, Django Rheinhardt.  Our conversation tracked  Jorgenson’s journey from being a young boy studying the piano to today where he is considered a world-class player of the guitar, both acoustic and electric.

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Rick Landers: When you were growing up were you one of those kids in the ’60s who started watching Ed Sullivan when the Beatles kicked off, and then the Dave Clark Five and all those other British groups?

John Jorgenson: Yeah, definitely. I grew up in Redlands [California] and my cousins lived in Whittier.  They happened to be visiting us the weekend the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, so it was very exciting. Our television didn’t get CBS very well so that was kind of irritating. The only TV that could get the channel was in my parents’ room and, of course, it was black and white.

So, we were all gathered around in there and it was way exciting. And I remember when the Beatles came to Hollywood Bowl the first time. My cousins got tickets and I was so jealous because even though it was only an hour drive away it just seemed like, “Aw. There’s no way that we could ever go.” You know, the tickets were only a few dollars or something. So that definitely piqued my interest. I was already way into music at that time.

Rick: Were you playing guitar at that time?

John: No. I was first playing the piano when I was five. My mom teaches piano and then when I was eight I started on the clarinet. When I was 10, I think in 5th grade, even though I was excited about the music and I loved the Beatles, I didn’t think that I could do that necessarily, at that time.

Rick: You weren’t garage band material.

John: Not quite, no. And then about two years later there was a kid who came to our school that did “show and tell” and played “This Land is Your Land” and sang on the ukulele. I was like, “Oh, that’s pretty cool.” We had a ukulele at home too, so I started messing around with that and I really liked it. And at the same time I started listening to radio. That would have been 1966 and I started hearing like “Hanky Panky” and “Little Red Riding Hood”. That was Sam the Sham.

Rick: Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.

John: And of course the Monkees TV show came out. I remember the premier of it was opposite the Beatles at Shea Stadium on the other channel, so my sister and I were fighting over it. I wanted the Beatles, she wanted the Monkees and we were back and forth with the channel changer. But, then I really became aware of pop music and I started asking my parents for a guitar.

Rick: Were they supportive?

John: Not so much. First of all it was a fad. I was young and it’s like I was already playing the clarinet and the piano and you can’t practice all day long. So they said, “If you practice.” Basically,  I started borrowing other peoples’  guitars and that made them realize I was serious about it and after about two years of that, they were like, “Okay. He’s not gonna forget about this. We have to get him a guitar.” So they said, “We’ll get you a guitar, but you have to practice the clarinet and the piano first.” I got an electric guitar, so I just practiced without plugging it in.

Rick: What was the one you got?

John: Yeah, St. George. And I found out later the model was called MP3. I destroyed mine. I tried to make it look like a Rickenbacker. I cut it all up and it never worked. I think the only thing I have left of it is a little piece of the pick guard material, but I just found one on eBay. It’s identical, same year, same finish. Everything except it has four pickups instead of two.

My friend Will Ray from the Hellecasters, he’s an eBay fanatic. Turns out it was in Asheville, North Carolina where he lives, so I said, “You just go down and get that. I’m not gonna bid on it. Just go down and get it for me.” So he got $50 off, no tax and no shipping. [Both laughing] And my first amp was called a Checkmate’66.

Rick: Who made that?

John: Tiesco. Which at that time, we bought them at the grocery store. They had a little stand with like three or four guitars, a revolving stand, and at the bottom was two or three little cheap amps.

So that was my first amp and my little band of my friends in my neighborhood, they didn’t have a bass player, and I wanted to play bass too. In the beginning I was back and forth between guitar and bass. So, my next birthday I got an acoustic, because there were free guitar lessons at our community college and my mom drove me over there and I was  probably the youngest and when I came out of the first class, I was almost in tears.

My mom said, “What’s wrong?”, “They said that I can’t be in there if I have an electric guitar.” I was like, “Ohhhhhh.” I guess they just figured it would be too loud or something. I don’t know, so it was real stressful. So they said, “Okay, your birthday’s coming up. We’ll get you an acoustic guitar.” So I got a Yamaha FG-180 which was nice. And I ended up moving to the advanced class, to which no one else ended up coming. So I just kind of got lessons, and basically the guy was a blues player so he taught me some blues scales and then I started to learn how to improvise pretty quickly.

Rick: Pentatonic.

John: Yeah. “Suzie Q” was out that summer and Led Zeppelin first album and Santana stuff and so I started learning that kind of stuff and Beatles records and Rolling Stones and Buffalo Springfield.

Rick: Were you more of a lead guitar player? Were you doing rhythm?

John: I didn’t consider myself anything. I just learned everything that I could. At first I wasn’t in a band. Actually my first little band I was playing bass so it didn’t matter, just whatever I could learn on the guitar, I would learn it. I guess the next Christmas I got a $50 bass made by Audition. It looked like a violin bass except it had a really mutated upper cutaway. It was really super cheap. And I saw the Let it Be movie and I saw Paul McCartney had tape-wound strings on his Hofner and I wanted those. I bought a set of Vox. They were Vox tape-wound strings and they were $30 [Laughing] which was almost as much as the bass and almost immediately the winding broke and they sounded like crap. Just really buzzy. I was so bummed out. But, I played bass and guitar until I was in my early twenties, till I started playing around L.A.

Rick: You played in Disneyland, right?

John: Yeah. I started my first job there…well my first job there was, playing in a rock band in their Tommorowland Terrace rising stage. I was pretty young. Then I got a college program where there were two different acts; the Kids of the Kingdom, which was like 12 singers and eight-piece band, like a stage show and then there was this marching street band.

I played guitar in the stage show and I would have gone to Florida that summer, but I was too young to cross state lines to work, some kind of weird thing. They kept me in California which was fine with me and that was kind of my first job with steady pay. It was kind of a corny show as you can imagine, but still I was playing electric guitar. One of the songs we played, “Top of the World” by the Carpenters. I bought a lap steel to try to play some steel licks.

It was great. I was like, “I like this. I don’t care what I play as long as I’m getting paid to play guitar.” I could read music. Sight reading on guitar is pretty hard for anybody I think, because of positions. But, I can read rhythms and then I took a degree in bassoon, clarinet and saxophone.

Rick: So if you’ve got theory and everything else down…

John: Yeah. And my dad was really instrumental in starting the Stan Kenton clinics, which was the first sort of jazz orchestra in residence in California. So, I got to go to those starting like age 14 or so.

Rick: So almost by osmosis you picked up on that.

John: Well, there were theory classes and everything.  I like jazz a lot now but when I was younger, I wasn’t that interested in jazz. It was just anything to play the guitar. I never thought I would be an arranger or anything like that, but you have to take a theory class and so I just started learning stuff. I think I probably learned more arranging from trying to pick apart Beach Boys records, trying to listen to their harmonies and hear how it all works. And playing in orchestras too and just sitting there and being in the middle of it. Just listening to everything and hearing it all the time.

Rick: With that group in Disneyland you were actually playing with the same people in different groups?

John: Well, that was a few years later. After that summer job, then I had another temporary job there where I was playing a music education show for kids, like third and fifth grade. Five times a day, the same show, really corny. I hated it so much.

Rick: Did you have a costume?

John: Kind of. I had to dress up like chartreuse and pink and lime green.

Rick: Cartoonish type stuff.

John: Yeah. Oh, it was the worst. I hated it and I would go to my counterpoint class in Redlands and then get in the car and drive to Anaheim, get there just before the first show, change clothes and do this stupid thing five times, then drive back in time for rehearsals three days a week. At the end of that job I said, “I never want to work here again. I hate this place.” You had to keep your hair really short, no creativity. It was just horrible. I’ve learned over the years never to say “never”. Because it’s gonna bite you in the ass. After I graduated from college I went to Disneyland on the spur of the moment just with some friends, hadn’t been there in a long time, just as a tourist. A guy that I knew and my ex-girlfriend’s roommate were in a show, a stage show there, so I went just to say “Hello” to them after their show and the one guy that I knew, we had done a Japanese television commercial together as a Dixieland band. They were advertising iced coffee in a can that you would buy in a vending machine. And I thought, “That’s terrible. That would be horrible. No one would want that.”  Of course now…

Rick: We’re all doing it.

John: Yeah, exactly. So again, I’m so wrong so many times. I had a speaking role in this commercial and they wanted me because I had a beard at the time and for some reason they wanted an American with a beard. It was funny because my friend who actually booked the commercial, he was really trying to be an actor and comedian and stuff like that. He was all bummed out that I got the part.

Rick: You were like Jeremiah Johnson.

John: Exactly. He was in this other show and he said, “They’ve just asked me to put together a band that can play bluegrass and Dixieland music and I’m looking for somebody that can play bluegrass fiddle and Dixieland cornet as a lead instrument in that style.” I said, “Well, I don’t know anybody like that, but I can play the mandolin and the clarinet.” I could play clarinet, I had taken a degree in it, but I didn’t know nothing about Dixieland at all. Nothing. Maybe I knew “Hello Dolly” or “When the Saints Go Marching In” which I wasn’t gonna say I knew that. And then mandolin, I just wanted to learn it really bad. I didn’t even own one. So I basically just lied. He said, “Okay. You’re the mandolin guy.” So I ran and bought a cheap mandolin and started practicing.

Rick: It’s hard to play because the nut is so small up there.

John: Well, and the tuning is like, awwww. Well basically, if you want to do a Chuck Berry lick. You can’t go like that, you have to go like that. Drove me crazy. But, I really wanted to learn it, so that was supposed to be a temporary job and at the same time I was playing with a new wave band called Neo-Paris and the Futures. I was playing a 1960, I guess, Les Paul Jr. double-cut through a Vox AC30.

Rick: Nice amp.

John: It was a great sound. I loved the sound and I also used a Rickenbacker sometimes, 12-string. 450-12. We were playing around like the Whiskey and the Starwood. All those kind of clubs in L.A.

Rick: Troubadour?

John: Yeah, Troubadour. The Motels had gotten signed. The Knack had gotten signed. The Plimsouls, you know, it was that time period. R

ick: Was this early ’80s?

John: Yeah. ’79, ’80. Yeah. So I was doing this Disneyland job during the day and it was like, “Wow. This is great. I can do this and still…”

Rick: Make some money, yeah.

John: And the more I did it, the more I liked the idea that I was outside, wasn’t in smoke because in those days there was still smoking in clubs and it was really loud and terrible. So much of the rock scene was not about the music.

Rick: It was like posing.

John: I’m a musical nerd. It has to be about the music for me. So after three months, they really liked this band a lot and they offered us a full-time job and  benefits, health and dental.

Rick: Take it.

John: Yeah, and you’re working like from 10 to five.

Rick: Oh, great hours too.

John: Yeah, and I was playing. I was commuting still and one day we did three double shifts in a row. I fell asleep driving home on the freeway for seven miles. Seven miles! Drifted over into the center divider and it just creased the car, tipped the tail, scared the crap out of me. And after that I bought a condo across the street from Disneyland. And then at that job that I was doing there, I really learned so much about bluegrass and about Dixieland. The banjo player was named Doug Maddox. He’s very, very good, like one of the best banjo players of like old Harry Reeser. He played tenor banjo style and Eddie Peabody’s plectrum banjo. He’s a good Scruggs 5-string player too. He had played in New Orleans a lot and knew about the Dixieland stuff. He played all these Harry Reeser songs that were really intricate and special. They would call them novelty numbers, I guess. People were amazed. I said, “Well, who does that on the guitar?” and he said, “Oh. Django Reinhardt.” I was like, “Oh really? Okay.” I went and found an LP and just was blown away. I had heard Clarence White. I really liked Clarence White and Doc Watson of course, Tony Rice and I loved that, but then Django was just way intense and all over it. I immediately started trying to learn that and started angling to get Disneyland to let us have a third entity.

Rick: So, that’s why the Hot Club band.

John: Exactly. And at the same time the guy who originally put the band together, this comedian, his name was Dick Hardwick. He’s actually a drummer, but he got a chance to be a comedian and so we replaced him in the band with a guy who was more known as a flat-picker at the time, Raul Reynoso. Raul was already into Django and had a Selmer guitar.

Rick: Oh, did he?

John: Before me. He was the first guy I knew with a Selmer, so he was in. He had the job. He had the look, too. At that time when he came in, we created this other entity and so in the morning we would play bluegrass. I played the mandolin and then in the afternoon or the middle of the day we would switch to Thirties outfits and play Django style music and sing Boswell Sisters and sing “Cats in the Fiddle” and those kind of things. And in the afternoon we would switch again to a Roaring Twenties kind of look and I played the clarinet or soprano sax. So, three different repertoires.

Rick: All those songs. That’s pretty amazing.

John Jorgenson – An Intro to Gypsy Jazz Guitar

John: Yeah. And then in the night time I would then drive up to L.A. and play rockabilly bass gigs.

Rick: And you moved in with Chris Hillman, right? To Desert Rose?

John: Yeah. That was all in the early ’80s and then ’85 I met David Grisman at the NAMM show at the Saga booth. They were selling a David Grisman model at the time that was patterned after a Monteleone. And I had a copy of a Selmer, I guess, at that time. I started jamming with them and while I was jamming, Chris Hillman and Al Perkins walked up. At that same time I had a band called the Cheatin’ Hearts which was very similar to what Desert Rose Band became. Three singers up front, me one of them, an acoustic guitarist and a girl singer and the rhythm section was the rhythm section from Desert Rose Band. Bill Bryson on bass, Steve Duncan on drums and pedal steel player was Sneaky Pete from the Burritos. So it was a really good band, but way too progressive.

Rick: Yeah.

John: Bill Bryson was already a friend of mine and he was playing with Chris Hillman, so he recommended me to Chris at the same time Chris saw me jamming with Grisman which gave me some credibility even though I only just met him. I started playing with Chris in an acoustic format, Bill, Al Perkins on dobro, Chris and myself.

Rick: Were they all local then?

John: Yeah. I lived in Anaheim. They all lived in Southern California. Chris lived in Ventura. Chris and I kind of swapped back and forth between mandolin and guitar and then we had a tour opening up for Dan Fogelberg and backing him up at the same time. Al couldn’t do it. He was playing steel with Dolly Parton, so Herb Pederson came in and took his place.

At the same time I was hearing Chris’ songs and saying, “You know, these are not really bluegrass songs. These are not acoustic songs. We should really plug in and get a steel player and drummer and do this,” because the harmonies were there, even before Herb was there they were there and when Herb came in they were even better. Chris resisted at first because he’d been through so many bands, so many record deals and was just sick of it.

Rick: Beat up on himself a lot.

John: Well, beat up on a lot of people and himself too. Yeah, he could be very aggressive. But I had a vision. I heard the music. I wanted it to sound like the Pretenders and Bill Monroe [Both laughing]. So bluegrass harmonies with the British rock guitar sounds, you know? So I made a demo of a couple of the songs and said, “This is how I hear the music,” and it was like, “Oh, okay. This is good.”

It took awhile to transition and find the right players. I knew that Steve Duncan was the right drummer. That took a little doing because they didn’t know him and J.D. Maness I knew would be the right steel player. We did a couple of gigs with a couple of other guys and I was ready to just bail on it, because I didn’t like it. And Chris realized that it wasn’t happening and if it doesn’t happen…he realized it, too.

I had a little bit of a hard time with those guys because I was so much younger and they were already kind of famous, experienced, whatever. Anything I would say was like, “What does he know?”

Rick: A kid.

John: But, I did know. I knew from my gut what would work and what wouldn’t and the first gig that we played as that lineup or maybe the second, I think, with the real lineup, we got it signed.

The Desert Rose Band – In Another Lifetime

Rick: Where was that?

John: It was at the Palomino in North Hollywood. I think our first gig was in in Calabasas, Malibu area and I remember Rick Roberts was there from Firefall, very drugged out of his mind. Anyway, we got signed at that show and this whole thing where they wanted to sign they were kind of just pitching it as Chris and Herb because they had the names and the record label says, “No. We want that other guy, the young guy, to be up front.”

So they just signed three of us and then we had to make a side deal with the other guys in the band, which was lame because a band is a band, but anyway. Pretty quickly our first single did okay. It was like top 20. The second one was like top 5 and the third one was number 1. Even during this time I kept my job at Disneyland and I would just take a little leave of absence if we had a tour.

Rick: Keep the regular money coming in.

John: Yeah, because we weren’t making any money at first and so finally it was during the NAMM show time again in January 1988. Chris called me and said, “Well, I just want to let you know you have your first number 1 record.”

Rick: What was that?

John: “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back”, it went number one at that time. Then I went, “Okay, I guess I can quit this day job now.”

Rick: [Laughing] Made it, yeah.

John: Yeah. And the band started touring more and the producers of that band started using me for other sessions in Nashville. I sort of instantly became an A-list session player. People asked me, “How can I break into that?” and I was like, “I have no idea.”

Rick: It just happened.

John: I didn’t try. Those guys were successful producers at the time. They liked my sound and my approach and I was different coming from California. I was playing a Danalectro 6-string bass and Rickenbacker 12-string and Gretsch and Teles and Vox AC30s and the bluegrass element, too. The mandolin and the flat top and that stuff wasn’t really happening. Nashville was very like process Strat through rack kind of…that was a bad time. So I came in at a really good time, bringing the more organic stuff into the picture and they wanted to use that and so it was just great. I started a whole session career.

Rick: Around that time or was it a little bit later than that, did Fender approach you for your own model?

John: No, around that time, Desert Rose Band time. I still lived in Anaheim and I played on a TV show called Nashville Now which was like a daily talk show on TNN, which I guess they still have that. There was a house band there and the guitarist was named Fred Newell and he was associated with G&L and he told them, “Hey there’s this new band,” and I became friends with him and he said, “I think you should talk to this guy.” At the time I had a ’53 Tele and I was playing my favorite, probably still is my favorite, was a ’62 reissue Tele that I bought from Japan.

Rick: Was it a Tokai or…?

John: No it was a Fender. It was one they hadn’t started selling in the US yet.

Rick: Yeah, I’ve got an ’82 Strat that wasn’t sold in the US.

John: They brought us over, my little band from Disneyland, and they took us over to Tokyo for the grand opening of Tokyo Disneyland. During that time we just went shopping all the time and we couldn’t believe we could go into a store and buy brand new vintage Fenders. It was like, “Oh my God!” So we ended up buying so many guitars and that was one of them. It was a Tele custom, really nice. It sounded great.

Rick: Great quality.

John: It sounded better than the ’53, really. More balanced. Anyway, G&L, I met them and they said “Well, we’d like you to try this.” Dale Hyatt was really my guy, but I also did stuff with George [Fullerton] and with Leo [Fender].

Rick: Really? Oh, that’s right. You were moving around.

John: Yeah. It was super cool. I carried that guitar around for quite awhile and I played it on sound checks and I always liked it, but I was just nervous to play it on a gig. And then finally one gig I just said, “Oh, okay. I’m just gonna play it.” It just sounded so great, really good sounding guitar, but it wasn’t the look that I wanted. It was just natural. It was nice, it was pretty, but it was just natural and I was into the flash. So I bugged them to build me a silver sparkle finish.

Rick: You were into splash-splash.

John: Oh yeah, because the thing is, some people can hear the difference, but everyone can see.

Rick: Yeah, true. Great stage presence.

John: You gotta have it. So they did build me that one and that became kind of my main guitar with G&L and the cool thing was they would call me and I’d ask, “Wow, I wonder what this would sound like with this pickup combination?” and they’d come and say, “Well, Mr. Fender has something he’d like you to try.” I’d come down and sit in his office. Really cool, and I would go out to lunch with the three of them. When older people that have known each other that long are together, there’s a particular energy.

Rick: It’s a marriage.

John: It’s really cool, yeah. And Leo would order the same thing every day at the same restaurant: tuna salad sandwich on white bread, half of it to go and a chocolate shake in a styrofoam “to go” cup.  He’d eat half the sandwich there. He’d take the other one to go.

Rick: Very basic.

John: Yeah. And he’d always flirt with the waitresses too, even when he had like a stroke and it was hard for him to talk and stuff.  So then, it was actually after Leo passed away, they said, “We hope that you’ll stay with the company. We’re gonna sell to VBE.” Well, I did.

I tried to stay with the company and we tried to do a signature model and what I was gonna try to do was get a dummy coil so I could have the same sound but just humbucking. We could get the tone or we could get the output. For some reason we couldn’t get the tone and output and Seymour Duncan was supposed to help us, but he has a zillion projects and who knows? Whatever he’s got. So I just kind of forgot about it and then the next NAMM show somebody goes, “Wow! I saw your signature guitar.” I was like, “What?” “Yeah, they have it at G&L.” They just made one that was just like the guitar that I was playing but it didn’t have…I didn’t approve it or anything.

Rick: Really? That’s kind of weird.

John: Yeah, it was really weird. No contract. No nothing.

Rick: You’d think that would be illegal.

John: You would, exactly. So a couple of months later I was just starting, gonna have the first tour with Elton John and I called them up and said, “Don’t you think it would be a good idea if I’m gonna go on this world tour if I had one of my signature guitars?” [Rick laughing] and they said, “You don’t have one?” I said, “Well, did you send me one?” “Oh, sorry.”

All during that next year I was after them to give me a contract and figure out the royalties and all this kind of stuff. They never did.

Rick: That’s really strange.

John: And at the same time I kept sending them different guys who were playing with Merle Haggard and Elliot Easton from the Cars, different people that were interested in the guitar and they wouldn’t return their calls. So then I looked like an idiot and they were rude to all those people. They just didn’t have their shit together basically. At the end of that year, meanwhile in the Hellecasters Jerry Donahue was already a Fender signature endorser and kind of got involved with G&L after me. Jerry was always after us to go to Fender because he wanted us all to be with Fender. We had fun with it in kind of a little contentious way, not negative. Finally I just got so sick of G&L that I said, “Okay”, and Fender was kind of courting us because they wanted us. So we met with them and we decided to go with them and I just told G&L, “You don’t have permission to make this with my name on it. You have two months to sell all your existing stock and you owe me X amount because you never told me.” “Oh, we can’t do that!” “Well, you have to. Then pay me in guitars.”

Rick: So did they ever…?

John: Yeah, they sent me a batch of guitars. They never paid me money and I don’t know how many were…they never accounted to me…

Rick:…how many they actually sold, so you never know what you lost.

John: No. Supposedly it’s just under 200 guitars, but I don’t know. But, it was okay, and Fender like any new relationship, they really were, “Hey, we want a signature guitar.” We weren’t gonna move from that to step back. They said, “What we can do quickly is a limited edition series and we’d like to have a whole Hellecasters limited edition series. We do that in Japan and it’s for a limited time period and you can just do whatever you want. Just make it as wild as you want.” So we each designed whatever we wanted.

Rick: And you did.

John: Yeah. [Both laughing] I actually wanted black sparkle but they couldn’t really figure out black sparkles so it seems like…I mean I can see it in my mind, but they came up with the sable colored one and I was like, “Okay. That’s all right. It’s cool, different.” I’d never seen anything like that before. They said, “At the same time we’ll do custom shop signature models for you, but that will take more time,” so all of that kind of came together and at the very beginning they were pretty supportive, but as it went along they never advertised the guitars, ever.

Rick: Yeah, I don’t remember ever seeing them.

John: Except their own publications.

Rick: Yeah, because I don’t remember seeing anything in Guitar Player or anything.

John: And they were actually pretty popular. They extended the ordering time by six months because so many people wanted to reorder but they had only gotten them at the end of the limited time period, so that was okay. I was really happy with that guitar although there was a problem with it.

Rick: It was a capacitor, right? I think people were pulling them out.

John: Well, they’re supposed to pull them out.  I think on my prototype, I wanted to have a regular 5-0 switch and then a push-pull to get your other combination and then the G&L…it was really patterned after G&L Comanche because that’s what I was using as a tremolo guitar, that type of tremolo, maple body, Z-pickups, you know, split coil pickups and G&L has a volume, treble and bass controls. So I wanted all that and then with the push-pull. The problem with the prototype, the first couple of models, the push-pull was the second knob and while I was playing sometimes I would hit it, so I asked them, “Just move that one down to the bottom knob,” and somehow in that an extra capacitor got added. I obviously had the prototypes, so I didn’t know and people were asking me, “Well, is it supposed to sound like a normal Strat?” and I’m like, “No, because the pickups are different but it’s not supposed to sound muffled like this.”

Rick: Yeah, muffled, eh?

John: What happened was whenever they added that extra capacitor/resistor, it made it sound like you had the treble, the tone all the way rolled off.

Rick: Almost like it drew it down.

John: Yeah, well it did, but it took me a long time to figure that out. Finally someone brought one to one of my workshops and I said, “Well, let me plug it in here,” and I was like, “No, this is not what it’s supposed to sound like,” and apparently all the factory ones sounded like that. All you have to do is lift up the back of the pick guard, clip out that capacitor.

Then the knobs work as they’re supposed to, treble and bass, and it sounds great, but if you don’t do that it sounds crap. So that’s disappointing. I think it’s a little bit of a sleeper because of that.

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Related Links:

John Jorgenson

Desert Rose Band (MySpace)

Michael G. Stewart Photography

Guitar Archeology