Dave Navarro was Guitar World's cover star for the March 1996 issue – and the guitar he brandished for the occasion, an early ’90s Les Paul, has one hell of a story behind it.
The electric guitar was originally bought for a Guns ’N’ Roses audition – which never transpired – and by the time the Guitar World shoot came about, Navarro had already jumped ship to Ibanez, PRS, and Fender Strats.
“Years after the GN’R thing, I knew that guitar was kind of leaning up against the wall,” Navarro tells Guitar World.
“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.
“For some reason, I picked up that guitar and grabbed it for the shoot. I think, in hindsight, I was probably contractually supposed to be holding a PRS!” he adds with a laugh.
The Les Paul's story doesn't end there, however. In a final twist of fate, John Frusciante also, somehow, got involved.
Navarro remembers, “He was in detox at a hospital. 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. 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.”
Turns out, once the guitar was with Frusciante, it was as good as gone, as Navarro puts it: “He apparently sold the guitar once he got out of rehab. And that was that – I never saw that guitar again. That was somewhere in the Nineties.”
Frusciante never forgot the gesture, though, and years later made it up to Navarro.
“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.'”
For more from Navarro, plus new interviews with Eric Bell and Jim Root, pick up issue 598 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.
