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Link Meanie’s Gibson L6S

A guitar as cool as the guy who plays it…

Link Meanie is one of the best pop punk singers in Australia, fronting the legendary Australian band The Meanies. He has the perfect rock scream… loud, shredding and in tune. Along with The Meanies, Link also sings and plays guitar in an awesome rock band called The Bakelite Age. The Bakelite’s are labelmates with my band on Spooky Records. They are fantastic… great tunes, twisted guitar lines and Link up front screaming his ass off. And with him all the way is his trusty Gibson L6S…

I asked Link what the story was behind his guitar, and here it is…

“My Gibson L-6(S?)I bought it at Billy Hydes when I was about 16/17 so that’s about 85/86 and the bloke at the store told me it had belonged to the oz semi 70’s/80’s music industry celebrity John St Peters. It’s not much of a selling point so I took it to be true. It had a horrendous lacquer job done on it and a horrible heavy metal pick-up in it (which probably appealed at the time). I eventually sanded of the lacquer and did various things to it including pick-up changes, removing scratch plate (which I lost). On the Big day out tour that the Ramones did I got them all to sign it (alas no Dee Dee). I was worried about rubbing them of so I built the large scratch plate that is still on it. Anthony Paine (Harvester guitars) put the present pick-up in it. It’s been thrown, whacked, kicked, covered in blood, and stood on and it’s still in perfect working order (although the tuning pegs have been replaced a few times)…”

Out of interest, I googled John St Peters and was surprised to find he wrote and recorded the theme to Simon Townsend’s Wonder World!!! And there’s a good chance he did it on Link’s guitar! (dates match up…) When I told Link, he was pretty impressed…

“Thanks mate. Didn’t know he wrote that. I knew he had naff songs, but jesus… Welcome to my wonderworld!”

I always loved Link’s scratchplate as it’s a really interesting, unique design, and to find out it actually has Ramones signatures underneath makes it even more cool. I did a little digging and found a few old Meanies shots with the Ramones signatures out in the open before Link made his cool scratchplate.

Link further modified the guitar by putting what looks like old radio knobs on it, which suits the overall customised feel.

The back looks nice and worn, with years of sweat and blood building up a nice patina (there’s my Antiques Roadshow talk coming out)…

The headstock on these Gibson’s is pretty different to the regular Les Paul shape. They slimmed it down a little so the string angle wasn’t as ‘splayed’ (real word) and to help tuning, I guess. I like it… Gibson kind of brought it back a few years ago with the Epiphone Elite series guitars. Links is in suprisingly good nick, with only a little paint missing. (trussrod cover is gone though…)

… and as Link mentioned, the tuning pegs have been changed a few times. Also, being a 70’s Gibson, it has the cool neck volute… (hey, I like them ok?)

Link does this thing with his guitar where he hits a chord, holds it, then bends the neck by pushing aginst the body. It sounds exactly like a Bigsby and every time he does it I wait for the neck to snap off and fly into the crowd… hasn’t happened yet, though.

Thanks Link for the great music and can’t wait to catch up with you guys again soon!

Check out Link in action with The Bakelite Age here… checkit!

And here is the Meanies…