Gibson Les Paul Quotes

Then I remembered something else from the 2112 liner notes. I pulled them up and scanned over them again. There was my answer, in the text that preceded Part III—“Discovery”: Behind my beloved waterfall, in the little room that was hidden beneath the cave, I found it. I brushed away the dust of the years, and picked it up, holding it reverently in my hands. I had no idea what it might be, but it was beautiful. I learned to lay my fingers across the wires, and to turn the keys to make them sound differently. As I struck the wires with my other hand, I produced my first harmonious sounds, and soon my own music! I found the waterfall near the southern edge of the city, just inside the curved wall of the atmospheric dome. As soon as I found it, I activated my jet boots and flew over the foaming river below the falls, then passed through the waterfall itself. My haptic suit did its best to simulate the sensation of torrents of falling water striking my body, but it felt more like someone pounding on my head, shoulders, and back with a bundle of sticks. Once I’d passed through the falls to the other side, I found the opening of a cave and went inside. The cave narrowed into a long tunnel, which terminated in a small, cavernous room. I searched the room and discovered that one of the stalagmites protruding from the floor was slightly worn around the tip. I grabbed the stalagmite and pulled it toward me, but it didn’t budge. I tried pushing, and it gave, bending as if on some hidden hinge, like a lever. I heard a rumble of grinding stone behind me, and I turned to see a trapdoor opening in the floor. A hole had also opened in the roof of the cave, casting a brilliant shaft of light down through the open trapdoor, into a tiny hidden chamber below. I took an item out of my inventory, a wand that could detect hidden traps, magical or otherwise. I used it to make sure the area was clear, then jumped down through the trapdoor and landed on the dusty floor of the hidden chamber. It was a tiny cube-shaped room with a large rough-hewn stone standing against the north wall. Embedded in the stone, neck first, was an electric guitar. I recognized its design from the 2112 concert footage I’d watched during the trip here. It was a 1974 Gibson Les Paul, the exact guitar used by Alex Lifeson during the 2112 tour.

Someone—Tony or Warner Bros.?—had decided that the grueling schedule and the added tension in the band might be alleviated somewhat by the relative comfort of bus touring versus Old Blue. It was a nice idea. It might have even been a gambit to see if the camaraderie of sharing a luxurious living situation might heal the band’s broken bonds. So we loaded all of our gear into the parking lot behind our apartment and waited for our new accommodations to arrive. Everyone, I think even Jay, was excited about the prospect of spending at least some small part of our lives seeing what it was like to tour in style. That was until he laid eyes on the Ghost Rider. What we were picturing was sleek and non-ostentatious like the buses we had seen parked in front of theaters at sold-out shows by the likes of R.E.M. or the Replacements. Instead, what we got was one of Kiss’s old touring coaches—a seventies-era Silver Eagle decked out with an airbrushed mural in a style I can only describe as “black-light poster–esque,” depicting a pirate ship buffeted by a stormy sea with a screaming skeleton standing in the crow’s nest holding a Gibson Les Paul aloft and being struck by lightning. The look on Jay’s face was tragic. I felt bad for him. This was not a serious vehicle. I’m not sure how we talked him into climbing aboard, and once we did, I have no idea how we got him to stay, because the interior was even worse. White leather, mirrored ceilings, and a purple neon sign in the back lounge informing everyone, in cursive, that they were aboard the “Ghost Rider” lest they forget. So we embarked upon Uncle Tupelo’s last tour learning how to sleep while being shot at eighty miles per hour down the highway inside a metal box that looked like the VIP room at a strip club and made us all feel like we were living inside a cocaine straw. Ghost Rider indeed.