GUITAR SHOPPING WITH SLASH

WALKING INTO NORMAN’S RARE GUITARS ON A SUNNY afternoon, Slash is a man on a mission. Specifically, that mission is to find a ’59 Gibson Les Paul. And not just any ’59 Gibson Les Paul. He’s on the hunt for a tobacco burst — a rare and coveted finish on what is already a rare and coveted guitar model. “There’s only two that I know of,” Slash says.

“YOU GO IN LOOKING FOR ONE THING, AND THEN YOU SEE SOMETHING ELSE THAT YOU DON’T NECESSARILY NEED, BUT YOU HAVE TO HAVE IT”

One of the two, he used to own — it’s the famous model he uses to rip the solo outside a church in Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain” video. “But it was Joe [Perry]’s and I gave it back to him,” he says.

Slash still has three 1959 examples in his possession — “One’s basically a lemon burst, and the other two are faded cherry sunbursts,” he says. But he calls the tobacco burst