You don’t often hear that someone’s very first guitar was a 1968 Gibson Les Paul Gold Top – but this was the case for Pat Travers who, received one for his 14th birthday.
Admittedly, it was 1968, but it was still a generous gift – sadly, though, as Travers explains in his recent interview with Rick Beato, his good fortune was about to take a prolonged turn for the worse.
“My first guitar was a ’68 Gold Top when I was fourteen,” explains Travers. “It got stolen about a year and a half later.
“We had just finished playing at this bar about two-thirty in the morning. I went out to the car – nobody followed me – so I just leaned my guitar case up against the car and ran back in to get the keys. I got back, it’s gone.”
That kind of loss would be enough to reduce any adult to tears, but as you can imagine, it it weighed particularly heavy on the young Travers.
“I was super upset. I was only fifteen. I was very upset,” says Travers. “My mom, who co-signed the loan on the Les Paul, co-signed another loan on an SG - which was a little cheaper. Pete Townsend played one, so I was OK with that. I had it hung way down low and did my windmills in the opposite direction.”
That wasn’t the end of his bad luck, though.
“[A year later] I was only 16, we were playing at this bar,” continues Travers. “We’re in a frenzy at the end of the night. I think I dropped my pick, so I’m just smacking my hand [on it] and the neck just came off at the body! I’d never seen that. They usually crack up at the headstock. I proceeded to trash it because I was in the frenzy.”
Two Gibsons down, and the teenage Travers was now in the market for a third, so when he met “a guy” offering him a humbucker-equipped model for a bargain $200, he found the offer hard to turn down.
“It was like 200 bucks, with no case,” recalls Travers. “I thought, ‘Where’s that coming from? I’m not asking! No case, 200 bucks… here we go.’
“I had it for about two weeks, then 8am one morning at the little basement apartment we were all living in, there was a knock at the door. It was a cop and he said: ‘Do you have a red Gibson guitar SG model.’ I went: ‘Yes I do.’ I was lucky I didn’t get arrested - I just handed it to him.
“Three guitars. I’m 16 – there’s no way I can go to my mum and say: ‘Can you co-sign another loan for me.’”
Three Gibsons lost in two years? It's probably no surprise that when Travers eventually returned to the brand in the ’70s, he settled on the considerably more affordable Melody Maker...
Watch Travers full chat with Rick Beato above – and head to Beato's channel for more interviews.
