GLORY ROAD
Gibson’s London HQ is the perfect location at which to catch up with visiting dignitaries and it’s here we meet Jared James Nichols during his European tour. Known as much for his fingers-only style of lead playing as for his maverick approach to vintage-guitar modification, Nichols is now a Les Paul player. But it wasn’t always this way.
“I’ll tell you what,” he says, “in the early days, it was all about Stevie Ray Vaughan and Stratocasters. I grew up right next to the Alpine Valley Music Amphitheatre, which is where Stevie played his last show. When I was a kid, we could go out into our yard and listen to the concerts. When I started to play, a friend’s dad turned me on to SRV and that was it.
“I was such a little Stevie Ray Vaughnabee. I saved up for a Tube Screamer and even played heavy strings – and this was when I’d just started. I realised soon enough, though, that there had already been a Stevie Ray. By the time I was 17, people would listen to me and say, ‘You sound just like Stevie,’ but I was already thinking, ‘But how am I going to sound like me?’”
This is a moment that many guitar players come to
