32 vintageguitar.com vintageguitar.com VINTAGEGUITARJANUARY2007 33

SiSter’S SetJayJayFrench’sguitarcollectionisinspiredbyphotos

andalbumartfeaturingsomeofhisguitarheroes.We

askedhimtotellusabouthisfavorites.

1) 1952 Fender TelecasTerThoughI’mknown

asaGibsonguy,thefirstguitarIboughtwasaFender

Telecaster.In1966,IfirstsawMikeBloomfieldplayingone

onthecoverofthefirstPaulButterfieldalbum.In’72,Isaw

RoyBuchananplayoneandwasastoundedatthetoneshe

gotoutofit.WhenIturned50in2002,Itoldmywifethat

Iwanted’52blackguardTele,figuringotherguitarplayers

whowerebornin’52wouldsuckallofthemoutofthe

marketifIdidn’tactquickly.TheGuitarCenterinL.A.had

one,anditwasoneofthenastiest-soundingguitarsI’dever

played.2) 1952 Gibson les PaulFromahistoricalperspec-

tive,itwasimportanttoownoneoftheseguitars.With

mostGibsonmodelsfromthe’50s,thefirstyearofissue

wasnotaltogetherrealized.Thetrapezetailpieceonthe’52

LesPaulmakestheguitarprettyunplayable.However,the

guitarisstillawondertobeholdinallitspristinebeauty.

3) 1953 Gibson les Paul

Myfirstpurchase,basedonaFreddyKingalbumcover.

ItwasrefinishedbyJ.T.RiboloffattheGibsonCustomShop

in1990tocorrectanastoundinglylameattemptonmypart

toturninintoa’59Standard,withhumbuckingpickups

andaTune-O-Maticbridge.J.T.masterfullysalvagedthis

beautifulguitarfrommyridiculousexperiment.

4) 1954 Gibson les Paul JuniorIboughtthis

guitarin1984inthedressingroomoftheHorizonCenterin

Chicago.Ipaid$300.Aswithmanyfirst-yearJuniors,there

areintonationproblemsduetothebridgeandnecknot

beingcorrectlyset,buttheguitarsoundsamazing.Leslie

Westinspiredmetobuythisguitar.

5) 1955 Gibson les Paul cusTomAnamazing

photoofLeonRussellinRolling Stonein1969inspiredme

toownthisguitar.Iboughtitfromadealerfouryearsago

anditsvaluehassincequadrupled.

6) 1955 Gibson les PaulPurchasedfromTheGuitar

Centerfouryearsago.

7) 1956 les Paul sPecialWantedoneeversinceI

sawBobMarleywithoneonanalbumcover.

8) 1957 Gibson les Paul Thisisatransitionmodel,

withaTune-O-MaticbridgeandP-90pickups.

9) 1958 Gibson les Paul TV Junior Twoyearsago,

IsawhugepotentialforTVJuniorstoappreciate.Iboughtit

fromTheGuitarCenterinNewYork.

10) 1959 Gibson es-335AcquiredviatradesatGuitar

CenterL.A.,it’snotonlyinpristinecondition,buthasapair

ofdouble-whiteP.A.F.s.It’sthebest335I’veeverplayed

orheard.EricClaptonusingoneduringtheWheels of Fire

periodmakesmethinktheES-335maybethefinestsound-

ingofallGibsonguitars.

11) 1961 Gibson sG les PaulThisdead-mintguitar

wasacquiredbecauseIsawClaptonplayingone.Itwas

myintroductiontothe“womantone.”Infact,thefirsttimeI

everheardthewords“LesPaul”asitrelatedtoguitartone,

wasinreferencetothisguitar.IboughtitatTheGuitarCen-

terinL.A.in1998.ItwasthefirstvintageguitarIbought

fromthem,andit’soneofthecoolest-lookingguitarsI’ve

everowned.

1 2 3 4 5 6

78

9 10 11

Jay Jay French and his Twisted Sister bandmates were one of the

biggest acts on the rock scene and MTV in the early/mid 1980s.

Their sound was a cool mix of hard rock and power pop, propelled

to the top of the charts by anthemic, fist-raising radio hits like

“We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock.” • The band, which

this year marked its 30th anniversary, was a strange amalgam of

influences, and while stylisticially it followed on the heels of the

New York Dolls, Slade, and Kiss, guitarist Jay Jay French was

actually a fan of the Grateful Dead whose musical weaning

was more about folkies, hippies, and the young blues

guitarists on the scene in the mid/late 1960s.

A longtime aficionado of old

guitars, we recently sat with French

to talk about how the instrument

came to play such an important role

in his life, how he came to be a rock

star, and how more lately he started

collecting great instruments.

Vintage Guitar: How did

you first become

interested in

music?

Jay Jay French:

My brother, Jeff, who is

10 years older than me, was a

really great folk guitar player. My

parents were constantly listening to

music by The Weavers, and by the process

of osmosis – and Jeff ’s playing – I became

infatuated with the idea of being a guitar

player. In fact, the first concert I attended

was The Weavers reunion at Carnegie

Hall in December, 1963.

Do you recall the first song that really

caught your ear?

Yes, it was “Bye Bye Love” by the Everly

Brothers. My brother had the single on

a see-through-red 45. I was infatuated

with both the look of the record and the

sound of the harmonies.

When did a guitar part on a song

first get your attention?

The first time I was aware of a guitar

having a tone and riff that could turn

me on was the opening chord of Chuck

Berry’s “School Days” as it blared out of

my father’s car radio when I was 7 or 8

years old. It had me wondering, “Who

– and what – made that sound!?”

How did you get into playing the

guitar? Chuck Berry was my biggest influence.

The songs that spoke to me – covered

by the Beatles and the Stones – were,

unbeknownst to me, Chuck Berry songs.

For example, the opening guitar lick on

“Down the Road a Piece” blew me away,

and I wanted to learn it. I knew it was

Keith Richards doing Chuck Berry, but

I wanted to learn how it was originally

played. A neighbor in my building knew

the riff and taught it to me. It was the

first riff I ever learned. Likewise, George

Harrison doing a Chuck Berry riff on the

opening of “Roll Over Beethoven” did

the exact same thing for me!

For one month in 1971, just to make my

mother happy, I took guitar lessons from

a famous New York guitar player/builder

named Carl Thompson. He taught me a

bunch of jazz chords, but I almost always

reverted back to rock riffs. He told me

to get the rock riffs out of my system,

then come back. I’ve never been back

[laughs]!

What was the first song you could

actually play?

“The Last Time” by The Rolling

Stones.How about the first guitar solo you

could play?

continued on page 120 ...

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The solo from “Down the Road a Piece.”

When did you first get into a band?

My first real band was called The Bats. They needed a bass player, so I became their bass player. They were the hot s*** band on New York City’s Upper West Side. They had just blown away my very first attempt at a band – a group I put together for a junior high talent show that had me on guitar, Paul Herman on drums, and a Chinese kid named Bing Gong on vocal. We called the band John, Paul, and Bingo. Needless to say, The Bats kicked our ass.

What sort of music did John, Paul, and Bingo play?

We played two songs – “Like a Rolling Stone” was one, and the second, which horrified our parents and our teachers, was The Fugs “I Couldn’t Get High.”

At what point did you start to really pay attention to your gear?

My guitar-hero trail moved rapidly from Berry to Richards to Danny Kalb in The Blues Project, and by 1966 I was bitten by the Mike Bloomfield bug. I was so blown away by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band that I immediately went out and bought a Fender Telecaster. I knew that was the guitar Mike was playing on the album’s back cover. It cost $135 at a music store called Jimmy’s, across the street from the original Manny’s on 48th Street.

Did you have a favorite guitar at the time?

I loved the Telecaster. As much fun

as it was to play, when I got a copy of John Mayall’s Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton, I heard his guitar tone, and was forever transformed. My search for tone officially began.

My guitar world was ruled for the next couple of years by the tone of Albert King and Clapton, so I was hell-bent on replicating that sound. I read everything on Gibson guitars and Marshall ampli-fiers. I also realized that all this stuff was far beyond my financial reach.

In the spring of 1968, however, I had enough money to buy a Gibson SG Special and an Ampeg V-4 stack. The guitar was $242 and the amp was $600. This got me close. But I still wasn’t there yet...

Because I was fortunate enough to live in New York City at the time that the Fillmore East was in its golden era, every week I was able to see multiple shows of the greatest rock and roll guitar players who ever lived. I was blown away by their equipment choices. I didn’t understand how these guitar players – like Hendrix, Page, Jeff Beck, Pete Townsend, Henry Vestine (Canned Heat), Mike Bloomfield, Albert King, B.B. King, Johnny Winter, to name a few – managed to get such incredible sounds from a wide variety of guitars and amps.

Through it all, I still lusted for my humbucking pickups and Marshall stack, and finally, in 1969, I got a black Les Paul Custom and my 100-watt Marshall. Next to my daughter’s birth, buying this stuff was probably the hap-piest day of my life [laughs]!

When did you first hook up with some of the guys who would become Twisted Sister?

The first version consisted of people

JAY JAY FreNCH...continued from page 32.

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Jay Jay French with Twisted Sister in 1985 with his refinished Gibson Les Paul that 20 years later became the role model for the Epiphone Twisted Sister signature Les Paul.

122 VINTAGEGUITARJANUARY2007 vintageguitar.com vintageguitar.com VINTAGEGUITARJANUARY2007 123

who are not in the “classic” lineup. In the spring of 1972, a music attorney named Peter Thall lived in my build-ing, and he represented a producer named Ron John-son. Peter would regularly hear me blasting my guitar out the window, and one day in the elevator, he asked if I wanted to audition for a band named Wicked Lester, who Ron Johnson was producing. I told him I was inter-ested and gave him my phone number. Within a couple of days, I got a call from a guy named Gene Klein, who would later change his name to Gene Simmons, who told me about Wicked Lester. He said they sounded like the band Looking Glass but were looking to change their image and become heavier, kind of like Slade. He asked if he could see me play, and came down to a gig I was playing at a church in the Village. He brought along his songwriting partner – and soon to be Kiss co-founder, Stanley Eisen, who would later change his name to Paul Stanley.

At this point, I was transitioning out of my hippie Allman Brothers/Grateful Dead phase, and was eager to make a change. So I jammed with Wicked Lester two or three times, but didn’t get the gig. During that summer, I joined a cover band in New Jersey, and the drummer, Tony Petri, noticed that I was desert-ing my hippie roots. Sometime around December, I got a phone call from a guy named Mel Anderson, who had been given my number by Tony. Mel told me he was putting together a New Jersey version of The New York Dolls, and wanted to know if I would audition. The band was called Silver Star. I auditioned Christmas week, was hired a week later, and in February of ’73 we changed our name to Twisted Sister.

What were those days like for you?

Well, Twisted Sister went through 11 lineup changes – things seemed to evolve every six months or so as drugs and alcohol wrecked just about every version of the band.

Anyway, we were working 300 nights a year, playing the bar circuit, doing five sets a night, when I realized that my only shot at making it was to find a group of guys who loved making music, and didn’t drink or do drugs. I know that might sound strange coming from me, and with the image of Twisted Sister. But I knew that the combination of alcohol and drug abuse with rock and roll was a no-win situation. The only chance I had was to find guys who were as dedicated

to the music as I was. What was the inspiration for

Twisted Sister’s glam-based style?Oh, that’s easy – David Bowie, Lou

Reed, Slade, Mott the Hoople... Al-though The New York Dolls preceded us by six months, and their image was really cool, they were one of the worst bands

I’d ever heard – and I saw them about 10 times [laughs]! I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to be able to look like that and be able to play? What a concept!”

What sor t of guitars and amps were you using when Twisted Sis-ter started picking up steam?

Well, the bars we played wouldn’t let us play very loud. I was playing my ’53 Gibson Les Paul through a 50-watt Peavey Classic. Our other guitar player at the time was playing through a Fender Super Reverb. The bass player used SVT head and 8x10" cab.

Recall some of your higher-profile guitars/amps – those we saw in videos, those that toured the most, those you used in the studio?

Ninety percent of the recordings we made from 1979 through ’87 were made with one of two guitars – a ’79 Gibson Les Paul that was refinished in pink, and an Ibanez Destroyer that was also refinished with a black body and a mother-of-pearl dragon inlay on the body.

The amplifiers were a large collection of late-’70s 50-watt Marshall heads and JCM 800s.

When Twisted Sister was at its peak, were you buying a lot of gui-tars?

During our heyday, I only picked up a couple of pieces, thinking they’d always be accessible and reasonably priced [laughs]. But, luckily for me, in 1995 I walked into Guitar Center Hollywood and saw an array of Fenders on the wall – and noted their pricing. Six months later, I noticed the pricing had gone up five or 10 percent, and I thought, “Something must be going on here.” So, with the help of Mike Catterino, Drew Berlin, Dave Belzer, as well as Richie Friedman and Perry Margouleff, I hyper-speeded my knowledge of vintage guitars and started to acquire some re-ally great pieces – I bought everything I ever wanted. And I’m lucky in that, all told, I don’t think I spent more than 10 percent of the total value of my entire collection to acquire all my guitars... a couple of them, though, I have owned for 30-plus years.

When did you get your first guitar that we’d now call “vintage?”

In October, 1972, I bought a ’53 Gib-son Les Paul. I paid $300 cash and traded a ’68 Les Paul Custom at The Music Inn

JAY JAY FreNCH

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on West 4th Street in The Village. That store is still there!

What’s the most recent addition to your guitar collection?

The most recent addition to my col-lection is a guitar made in Finland, the brand is Roukangas. I contacted the company, and they sent a rep to my house with a couple of models. I actually designed one for myself and by happen-stance, we were headlining a major festival in Finland last summer, and the president of the company, Juha Roukangas, personally delivered the guitar! It’s a Tele-style guitar that looks and plays phenomenally.

Is there anything in particular you’re looking to add to the collection?

I guess a 1959 ’Burst [laughs]! And I have had the opportunity to own one a couple of times, but they were all just beyond my reach... It’s actually pretty funny to use the term “beyond my reach” because that was maybe $1,000 at the time. When I had maybe $500 they were $1,500. When they were $3,500, I only had $2,500.

I suppose I could sell or trade some of my other guitars to acquire one, but I don’t really know if it’d be worth it. i would not spend $200,000 to $300,000 to buy one outright. The market for those has become in-sane, though it has dragged the value of everything else right up there with it.

Talk about how Twis ted S is ter c a m e t o r e -unite.

Wel l , t he band stopped p e r f o r m -ing in late 19 8 7 a n d r e m a i n e d pretty much dormant for 13 years before we reunited brief ly to perform three songs at a dinner to honor our former A& R man, Jason Flom, who had since become the president of Atlantic Records.

The physical re-union of the five guys took place behind a bunch of kitchen appliances at Tavern On the Green in New

York City’s Central Park, while we were waiting to go onstage and surprise Jason. We agreed to play three songs for Jason, which we did. We then went home and didn’t talk for another year. And then in August of 2001, VH1 ran a “Behind the Music” episode on Twisted Sister. The editing of this episode was designed to exploit the dislike we all

had for one another, and fol-lowing the broadcast, I was

convinced that the band would never talk again. But less than a month later, 9/11 happened, and we were asked to participate in a fundraiser for the New York City Police

and Fire Departments. We played it, had a great time, left the theatre,

and basically didn’t talk for another year.

Then, word of the reunion spread to Europe, and we started to get huge offers to reunite. All this came as a complete shock, you know? But over the last four years, the band has head-lined some of the biggest rock festivals in the world. We never expected it. And now we play to crowds of 40,000 or more outside the U.S. Just this past July, we broke the all-time outdoor at-tendance record in Quebec, drawing 80,000 with The Scorpions.

The story of the reunion is detailed in our new DVD, Live at Wacken: The Reunion.

The fact you guys headline or co-headline these huge outdoor festivals is especially amazing when you consider that, as Dee Snider points out on Live at

Wacken, you didn’t headline these type of events even in the ’80s. What do you think is hap-

pening?I think the phenom-

enon of Twisted Sister is based on the legend

of our shows in the ’80s. Obvi-

ously, people talked about it, and said, “If you ever get a chance to see this band, do it...

it’s one of the most incred-

ible things you will ever see.” I

know it wasn’t based on our record sales [laughs]!

You recently worked with Gibson to design the Epiphone Twisted Sister Les Paul. How did that come about?

It’s kind of strange... but back in the heyday of Twisted Sister, I had contacted Gibson and

JAY JAY FreNCH

tHe tS epi Lp

BasedonaLesPaulStandardfromEpiphone’sprestigiousElitistseries,theTwistedSistermodelsportstheband’sBonelogoontheheadstockandguitaristJayJayFrench’snameonthetrussrodcover.Epiphonecreatedthe

“TwistedPinkburst”finishfortheguitar,whichdebutedin2005.

126 VINTAGEGUITARJANUARY2007 vintageguitar.com vintageguitar.com VINTAGEGUITARJANUARY2007 127

asked for an endorsement. I’d been playing Les Pauls for 15 years by that time, but Gibson wouldn’t return my phone calls [laughs]! I got so annoyed with them that I wound up switching to Guild, and later, Kramer guitars. But then, in 1997 I managed the band Sevendust, and through that relationship I became friendly with the people at Epiphone. I stayed in contact with Jim Rosenberg and Cara Hogan, the artist rep, and when Twisted Sister reunited, I talked with them about an Epiphone endorsement, which led to talks about creating my own signature Les Paul. To commemorate Twisted Sister’s 30th anniversary, they agreed to make the signature guitar. It’s identical to the one in the videos and on all the albums in the ’80s.

As I see it, the designation gives hope to other middle-aged transvestites out there who believe they deserve their own signature model [laughs]!

What input did you lend to the guitar’s design?

One of the big things is I had the back cut with a belly carve, which is a huge practical consideration that makes the guitar a lot more comfortable. We regularly play on stages that are 60 feet wide and 40 feet deep, and two things are important – the weight of the instru-ment and its comfort on your body. Les Pauls typically are not very comfortable if you’re running around, but this design looks great and feels even better.

Also, the neck is slimmer than current Les Paul necks. There aren’t many good things you can say about late-’70s Gib-sons, but one thing was the neck taper. Since my guitar was designed after a ’79 Les Paul Standard, the neck width feels better. And the Burstbucker pickups are the latest attempt by Gibson to capture the magic of the original PAFs. They certainly work for me.

Which guitars, amps, and effects are you using in concert these days?

I use the Epiphone Les Paul exclusively. Promoters provide the amps – usually Marshall DSL-2000s or JCM-800 heads. And we use the Line6 Pod in order to

keep our sound uniform from country to country. All the tones are preset, and then fed through the effects loops to the amps. It’s a practical solution to the very real problem of having a half-hour for your crew to set up stage gear so you can play in front of tens of thousands of people with no sound check, and the sound man knowing he can rely on an instantaneously accessible tone within minutes of setup.

So yeah, what I am admitting to, is that after years of experimentation with the most sophisticated and expensive products at my disposal, my live tone today comes from a chip that costs maybe six cents to produce! God bless technology. This month, Twisted Sister will release a new CD, A Twisted Christ-mas. What was the inspiration for a Christmas album?

I mentioned once in rehearsal that I thought it would be cool to make a Christmas album. It sparked a great deal of inspiration, and in fact, Dee admitted that the melody for “We’re Not Gonna Take It” came out of the sing-songy melody of “Come All Ye Faithful.” So we expanded the idea, and things worked out perfectly.

We decided to give the songs the same feel as some of our favorite bands; “Silver Bells” has an AC/DC vibe, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” has a Judas Priest vibe, “White Christmas” is reminiscent of Iron Maiden, and we touch on The Ramones, Thin Lizzy, and even refer to our own music in some of the arrangements. I think it’s the best album we have ever made. It is certainly the most fun.

What’s next for Twisted Sister?Ever since the reunion, we’ve ap-

proached each year on its own terms. I didn’t know what to expect in 2003, and I don’t know what to expect in 2007. If it’s meant to go on, it will. If not, then it has been an unexpectedly amazing ride. Having Billboard do a 30th an-niversary tribute and having the Long Island Music Hall of Fame induct us says to me that our value on this planet has merit beyond what any of us could have imagined when we started playing 30 years ago.

JAY JAY FreNCH