Joe Bonamassa pays tribute to guitar legend Paul Kossoff at NAMM

by Steve Newton on January 24th, 2012 at 11:14 PM

American guitar great Joe Bonamassa took time out at the big NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) industry event in Anaheim the other day to pay tribute to one of his favourite all-time players, Paul Kossoff.

Regular readers of this blog may recall that Bonamassa wasn't too thrilled with the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time list that Rolling Stone published last November. He thought the list was pretty "fucked up", one reason being that Kossoff didn't even make the cut. As he told Ear of Newt before his Vancouver show last month, the former Free picker was a huge influence on him, second only to Eric Clapton.

So it must have felt pretty satisfying for Bonamassa to stroll onstage at NAMM and be among the first to show off Gibson's new Paul Kossoff signature model 1959 Les Paul. He explained a little bit about the guitar and said some nice things about Kossoff, who died from drug-related heart problems in March of 1976, at the age of 25.

Then Bonamassa knocked off a few bluesy, Free-style licks to show what the new axe was capable of, and it sounded pretty fine--even without the benefit of a strap!

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