Im from his home town and his brother has a Bolin festival every year. Tommy played with many great bands and died when he was 25. Dean makes a Tommy Bolin tribute guitar, modeled as a superstrat, with 3 single coil pickups and a maple neck and has a inlay at the 12th fret, as well as a graphic modeled after his album Teaser on the body and way over priced.

euphoria480, he was an innovative guitarist, one of my favorites.
James Gang - Standing In The Rain (With Tommy Bolin)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHnEAgTN ... re=related

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

- Bustin' out for Rosey
- Post toasty

The entire Privates Eyes album was fantastic.

I posted about Tommy Bolin http://www.tbolin.com/ maybe a couple of years ago. I knew about him first from him playing in 'Zephyr', and later was surprised to hear him on on Billy Cobham's Spectrum album http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbLjObdYWhQ.

It was Bolin's way of moving the recording head on his Echoplex to alter a note, that influenced me when I recorded the 'Born in the Ghetto' insturmental track http://www.amazon.com/Born-in-the-Ghetto-Remix/dp/B000QVX5I2/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1313586005&sr=8-3.

I did get the chance to talk to him briefly after one of The James Gang's show. He seemed slightly 'out of it', but in those days, who wasn't. But I was surprised that Sat morning to hear that he was found dead after just opening for Jeff Beck.

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Tony Houston

A fantastic player, but a tragically flawed human being.

Perhaps in retrospect we can see that he should never have joined Purple - it probably killed him, or at least hastened the end. And he had left the band/been shown the door before he actually went that one step too far.

I liked his Jazz rock in questionnable trousers stuff, but am only really qualified to talk about his DP days. He roared out of the starting gate with the superb "Come Taste the Band", then spent the few months unravelling his reputation with a series of drug fuelled gigs - usually permanently high with Glen Hughes. Hughes himself acknowledges that he was lucky to survive those days. Between the 2 of them they turned Purple's reputation as a drinking band, into something much darker..

His legacy with Purple is really just that one album - his available recorded live work with the band was for a long time, pretty much hopeless. On the "Last Concert in Japan" live album, he could hardly even play, having (allegedly) temporarily paralysed his hand after shooting up heroin. Purple's spiritual father Jon Lord carries the whole gig with his Hammond. There are some more recent, harder to get radio show recordings available now that are better, and give us just a flavour of what could possibly have been..

All of which is a damn shame of course. His natural gifts could have made him extraordinary if he'd been able to control that monkey on his back.

Hear him here on a live version of one of my favourite tracks from Come Taste the Band. He's overbending, phrasing badly and frankly - well it's hardly great - but at least he gets through it:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFy__LE5t68


And after that, forget Deep Purple - at least in as much as they relate to Bolin as a player. Search out Teaser, Spectrum, maybe his James Gang stuff etc. Thats where the real Tommy Bolin was.

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Fender Highway & Classic 60s Strats, Fender Toronado, Telecaster, Gretsch Projet, Charvel 3, PRS SE Soapbar II & Custom 24, Burns Batwing and many others!

I loved his work with Billy Cobham in the early 70's. 'Spectrum' was a great album.

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Certainly he was mainly - rather than exclusively - a Fender player, but I've seen photos with him toting a Les Paul.

In fact, the infamous "Last Concert in Japan" album depicts a stage scene from that tour, showing a Les Paul on a stand.

I like his guitar tone - it's unusual for a Strat sound of that era. Don't know how he did it - assume there were some effects involved.

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Fender Highway & Classic 60s Strats, Fender Toronado, Telecaster, Gretsch Projet, Charvel 3, PRS SE Soapbar II & Custom 24, Burns Batwing and many others!

I used to own the Private Eyes and the Teaser albums. Loved them. I suppose I should visit Amazon......

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I Can't Explain