During Them Crooked Vultures shows John Paul Jones pulls out this Lap Steel Bass Guitar when they play “No One Loves Me & Neither Do I.”  It was custom made by Hugh Manson of Manson Guitars.   Manson is one of the UK’s most well-respected electric guitar makers and has also been the Led Zeppelin legend’s personal technician since the mid 1990s.

It’s called a Manson Lapaphone.  Its is an 8 string instrument (4 + 4x 1+ octave) the Kaoss screen is a XY midi controller, no internal effects are in the guitar.  It also has a Fernades Sustainer single coil pickup and 3 octave range on the fretboard.  Check out John Paul Jones using it live…

Manson was quoted as saying “Yes I did make this instrument and in fact all that JPJ uses on the Vultures tour.  It is an 8 string Bass lap steel with a midi control screen on it which will control any thing with a “midi in”. This is similar to the guitars I make for Matt Bellamy (Muse).  It also has a sustainer pickup on it and a hipshot bridge tuning system that enables 3 different open tunings by moving levers.”

raul Dave Grohl, Led Zeppelin Dave Grohl, John Paul Jones, Josh Homme, Led Zeppelin, Matt Bellamy, Muse, Them Crooked Vultures

Muse filmed the video for “Starlight” in the ocean off  Los Angeles on the deck of a Panamax bulk carrier named Ocean Chie. The video shows the band playing and shooting off flares, in an attempt to “get rescued,” but in the end this fails and they are abandoned.  This relates to the song’s lyrics, which mentions ships and abandonment.

Details on the boat for those who care….the Ocean Chie was built in Japan, is owned by a company in Singapore and cost around £50million to build.  It is registered in panama and is 50,000 tonnes deadweight and cost £24000 to hire for the day.  Matthew Bellamy stated in an interview with The Sunday Mail that “it was an epic feeling playing on a huge platform with the sea all around us.”

raul Quick Tidbit Matthew Bellamy, Muse

Battersea Power Station is a now unused coal-fired power station located on the south bank of the River Thames, near Battersea in London. The station ceased generating electricity in 1983, but over the past 50 years it has become one of the best known landmarks in London. The station’s celebrity owes to numerous cultural appearances, which include a shot in The Beatles‘ 1965 movie Help! and being used in the cover art of Pink Floyd’s 1977 album Animals.

Photographs for the cover of Pink Floyd’s Animals album were taken in early December 1976. For the photo shoot, an inflatable pink pig, made by the Zeppelin company, was tethered to one of the southern chimneys. However the pig broke free of its moorings and rose into the flight path of London Heathrow Airport to the astonishment of pilots in approaching planes. The runaway pig was tracked by police helicopters before coming to ground in Kent. Whether the pig escaped, or was released on purpose to increase publicity, is not known.

The Animals album is one of the main reasons for the worldwide fame of Battersea Power Station but it has also been in movies and photographed in albums by The Beatles, The Who, Muse, Morrissey, etc….

Screencap from The Beatles Help! Film.

The booklet art for The Who’s 1973 album, Quadrophenia.

A photograph on the inside case of Muse’s 2009 album, The Resistance.

The back cover of Morrissey’s 1990 album Bona Drag.

raul Pink Floyd, The Beatles, The Who Animals, Morrissey, Muse, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, The Who