In 1974, while working on the “Blow by Blow” album, Jeff was approached by Seymour Duncan who offered him one of his modified Telecasters for his Esquire. Jeff accepted the deal straight away, finding it surprising that Saymour would give him a better guitar for his old worn-out Esquire. But just as soon as Saymour walked out of the studio with the guitar, Jeff realized what a mistake he’d done, and he stated in many interviews that he regrets making that decision to this day. He couldn’t see that the guitar was what I should be doing. But Peter Grant did. And it was just that thread of lifeline that got us to America with Rod. Peter Grant believed in the act. Yeah. I think we wanted to have fun with no boundaries, with a drum loop and a real drummer. So there was a percussive [ electronic] pulse going on, but real drums were there too, and we just let it rip for about 10 minutes. No. It was my melody over his rhythm. He came up with the bolero rhythm on the 12-string. But it’s my riff in the middle. I’d decided that the Yardbirds’ trademark was to stop in the middle of the song and come into a completely different rhythmic thing, like they did on For Your Love. When you’re in the studio playing all this amazing stuff on guitar, are you totally blasé about it? Or do you surprise yourself as much as you surprise the rest of us?

The guitar is 3/4 size, and the body was made of plastic. The Maccaferri brand is mostly known for Django Reinhardt, who favored the Selmer Guitar -which was one of their classical guitar models with an oval sound hole. Also, we are not sure if this was the Stratocaster that Jeff used during the ARMS Charity Concerts, and the one that was given to him by Steve Marriott. Judging from the pictures alone this might as well be the case, but until we get more solid info, don’t take it as a fact. So I decided to go in and see what I could come up with without any chordal support, without any of that direction, because keyboards tend to determine a direction almost immediately. You hear a chord and you’ve got one foot in a certain direction. There are quite a few accolades accounted for this particular guitar and its orange sister. He played it during the ARMS Charity Concerts in 1983, and during the studio sessions of the “Flash” album. As well as for solos on “People Get Ready” and “Ambitious”. He also used it in 1984 during the legendary CBS Records convention in Honolulu, when he played on stage with Stevie Ray Vaughan for the first time. This guitar was the second Strat Jeff received from John, with the first one being stolen. He used it on the “Wired” album, and since then he keeps it safe at his studio, considering it to be one of his most prized possessions.Speaking of great guitar melodies, did the Heart Full of Soul demo arrive with that intro riff in place? I thought at one stage I was getting quite close to it, but when I listen to the originals, tonally I’m nowhere near it. Were things like the incredible guitar solo in Shapes of Things rehearsed or pretty much done off the cuff? The only full-sized acoustic guitar that Jeff talked about is the red Gretsch Rancher. Jeff was influenced to buy the Gretsch by Paul Peek of Gene Vincent’s Blue Caps who played in the classic 1956 movie “The Girl Can’t Help it”.

On the song Pork-U-Pine it’s amazing how you use the Strat’s vibrato arm to emulate the vibrato trills in Middle Eastern vocals. He keep looking, and since then he bought another two – one with the fixed arm Bigsby, and another with the swivel arm, which he used on the “Crazy Legs” album.Well, yeah, one more element that helps me play is the way they sing, especially the Eastern Indian girls, when they do that amazing scale. It’s almost unwritable. You can’t even tell what’s going on unless you slow it down. Yeah. And some of them were pretty memorably horrible. I think they were going in for a huge arse contest or something. Badly camouflaged.”

Regarding the very high pitched melody sections in the song Bulgarian , are you playing those with harmonics and using a wang bar to shape the melody? Jeff didn´t have a guitar of his own during the first few months he was playing with the Yardbirds, so for the time being he used the band’s Fender Telecaster, which was previously played and owned by Eric Clapton.No. I don’t think so. It was written by Graham Gouldman [later of 10cc], who also wrote For Your Love. And [The Yardbirds] got this Indian man in to play sitar. But the sitar player we got couldn’t play in 4/4 time. What he was doing was totally magical, but it just didn’t have any groove to it. With no bass player, drummer or keyboard player, it was just a natural progression, a natural thing you’d want to do – to go to a programmer and mess around with that Jeff played this guitar onARMS Charity Concerts in 1983, and duringthe studio sessions of the “Flash” album for solos on “People Get Ready” and “Ambitious”. He also used it in 1984during the legendaryCBS Recordsconventionin Honolulu, when he played on stage withStevie Ray Vaughan for the first time. Yeah. I couldn’t get enough of him. A day would go by in half an hour when you were with Moonie. Just complete lunacy and genuine organic humor. Your jaw would ache from laughing. How [The Who] put up with him for as long as they did, I’ll never know.”