Whitesnake guitarist Joel Hoekstra says he regrets how long it took him to become a Les Paul player – and it took another Gibson icon to pull him away from ’80s Superstrats.
Hoekstra has had a varied career, with stints with Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Cher, and Night Ranger, as well as starring in Broadway musicals, before Whitesnake came calling in 2014.
In the band, Goldtop Les Pauls have been his main weapon. But for years, Gibson guitars were never on his mind.
“It took me forever, man,” he tells Guitar World. “I started as a Floyd Rose kid. I was working on a Kramer, and I ended up getting a Jackson from my friend [John Farnham guitarist] Brett Garsed, so I was very much in that world, but also in the world of trying to do gigs, fit the bill, and play good rhythm guitar.”
The mentality of 1980s shred, particularly through his penchant for dextrous two-handed tapping techniques, oozes through Hoekstra’s playing. As he says, the “raw rock thing” came later down the line, and it found him “trying to take the combination of those things, and mesh them with a little bit more of an aggressive rock style of tapping.”
He’s also picked up Teles and Strats along the way, especially when playing with Jefferson Starship’s Cathy Richardson, believing single-coil guitars better complemented her acoustic guitars. Yet, oddly enough, it was Janis Joplin who indirectly flipped his choice of electric guitars upside-down.
“When I came out here to New York City to do [Broadway musical] Love, Janis, which is a show about Janis Joplin, and the music was primarily [Joplin’s early band] Big Brother and the Holding Company, I was like, ‘All right, I’m gonna get a Gibson SG, because that’s what those guys played.’
“I ended up on the SG for a bit. And then I thought, OK, maybe it’s time to go ahead and take the plunge on the first Les Paul, which turned out to be this [the Goldtop he plays during the interview].”
“It took me forever to commit. And once I got there, I went, ‘I should have been doing this for a very long time.’”
The guitar has been a faithful steed for Hoekstra. So much so that its looks are starting to deceive.
“Nowadays, it’s got so much wear and tear on it that it looks like a vintage instrument,” he adds. “But it’s not. It’s just an R7 [a Gibson Custom 1957 reissue] that’s just gotten around the world with me and beat to hell.”
Unusually, the guitarist's playing was once praised by Ace Frehley, even though he wasn't actually playing anything.
His reputation precedes him, however. Just check out this lesson on eight-finger tapping. The man's a maverick.
