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“B.B. asked to try a few licks on my guitar. He smiled and asked, ‘Why you working so hard?’” How B.B. King changed Billy Gibbons’ approach to guitar strings
Billy Gibbons may be one of the coolest cats ever to sling a Gibson Les Paul, but it took B.B. King playing his guitar to spark a string-gauge shake-up that changed the way he played forever.
With the recent release of Joe Bonamassa’s new tribute album to the King, Blues Summit 100, the late blues legend is back in the limelight. The record’s release coincided with what would have been King's 100th birthday, and, speaking in the new issue of Guitarist, ZZ Top maestro Gibbons reflects on his earliest memories of him. It proved to be life-changing.
They had met in the 1950s in Las Cruces, New Mexico, igniting “some lively discussions surrounding guitars”, including one line from King that left Gibbons re-assessing his belief about guitar tone.
“At the time, using heavy- gauge guitar strings was thought necessary for getting a big tone,” Gibbons quips. “When B.B. asked to try a few licks on my guitar, he quickly smiled and asked, ‘Why you working so hard?’ He then laid it down to show off a new set of his super-light-gauge strings.
“It was at that very moment that everything turned around. As BB then said, ‘Light is all right!’”
Gibbons practically restrung his guitar there and then, and the change was instant. His lighter string gauge, coupled with his decision to ditch guitar picks for pesos – “the serrated edge of the coin produces a delightful scratchiness,” he once said – transformed him into the player we know and love today. A guitar lesson from Jimi Hendrix didn’t hurt, either.
“Ironically, the switch to lighten the load, so to speak, was automatic,” he develops. “First came the set of nines, then eights. And now, thanks to Jim Dunlop, we've slithered down to sevens. They stretch, stay in tune, and they don't break. B.B., we thank you!”
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A freelance writer with a penchant for music that gets weird, Phil is a regular contributor to Prog, Guitar World, and Total Guitar magazines and is especially keen on shining a light on unknown artists. Outside of the journalism realm, you can find him writing angular riffs in progressive metal band, Prognosis, in which he slings an 8-string Strandberg Boden Original, churning that low string through a variety of tunings. He's also a published author and is currently penning his debut novel which chucks fantasy, mythology and humanity into a great big melting pot.
