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

Them Crooked Vultures have joked about how drummer Dave Grohl was supposedly “rushed to doctor” because he’d overdosed on caffeine – by drinking too much coffee.  Josh Homme and John Paul Jones, posted a video online explaining Grohl’s coffee-drinking habits.

“Two weeks after this video was shot, Dave was rushed to doctor due to the onset of unwanted physical effects caused by too much caffeine. For reals. He was kind of a mess.”

The message continues, “Since then he has reduced his intake of the super delicious hot beverage to a healthier level.”

UPDATE:

March 22, 2010

Dave confirms it wasn’t a joke and was actually real…

“We were in the studio making a record and I was drinking a lot of coffee,” he told Absolute Radio.  He added: “I was doing Vultures stuff at night, Foo Fighters stuff during the day and I had a newborn at home so I was sleeping two-three hours a night on an air mattress in a guest bedroom. And yeah, I had too much coffee, I started to get chest pains so I went to the hospital and they told me to stop drinking the coffee.”

raul Dave Grohl, Foo Fighters, Nirvana Dave Grohl, Foo Fighters, Josh Homme, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, Queens Of The Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures