“Clapton kept calling Andy Summers and said, ‘You need to sell me your guitar. I’m going to record Fresh Cream and I need a Les Paul – that’s the sound I want’”: The hidden history of Eric Clapton’s 1960 Summersburst Les Paul Standard

Cream: Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton perform onstage in 1967.

Back in the mid-1960s, Gibson’s cherry sunburst Les Paul Standard had been discontinued five years previously. But some devotees of blues guitar, such as a young Eric Clapton, knew that, if you could find one, the pre-SG Les Paul was an instrument to be reckoned with. The problem was finding one.

A post-war embargo on American luxury goods and musical instruments had ended only a few years previously, in June of 1959, and US guitars, such as Strats and Les Pauls, were rare birds and genuine examples coming up for sale were hunted down diligently by London’s leading guitarists.