Yungblud on what it was like to play Steve Jones’ Sex Pistols Les Paul

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Yungblud, or as his friends call him, Dom, is part of the new vanguard heralding the resurgence of punk rock.

As an artist capturing the zeitgeist and the quintessential voice of Gen Z, he's looking back at punk pioneers and borrowing a page – or in this case, a guitar – from their playbook.

At a recent gig in Paris, Yungblud had the rare opportunity to play Steve Jones' 1974 Les Paul Custom, a guitar that was recently up for auction and has been the subject of many rock 'n' roll rumors over the years.

“I was literally sat backstage playing it through a Twin Reverb and it sounded exactly like [Sex Pistols classic] Pretty Vacant,” Yungblud tells Total Guitar.

Naming the Pistols, The Clash, and The Damned as his favorite old-school punk bands, Yungblud says encountering their hard-hitting music in his childhood transformed his entire musical trajectory.

“Hearing Johnny Rotten with Steve Jones, Joe Strummer, and Captain Sensible was mind-blowing for me. I remember being hit in the face by their music around the age of seven.

Therefore, holding Steve Jones' storied Les Paul felt nothing short of surreal.

“Being able to shut my eyes and play Pistols riffs, and have it sound exactly like the record without three hours of fine-tuning on pedals or a laptop was fucking mental,” he raves. “Straight in, boom, go! And that guitar is heavy as fuck, too heavy for me to play, to be honest. It’s a proper ’70s Les Paul in that sense.”

The guitar enthusiast who made the pairing happen is Matthieu Lucas, from Matt’s Guitar Shop in Paris.

Lucas, who owns the high-profile boutique vintage guitar emporium, also lent this iconic punk axe to Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong earlier this year, the ’55 Gibson Les Paul Custom – previously owned by Paul Kossoff and Eric Clapton – to Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith, and Jeff Buckley's famous ’83 Telecaster to Myles Kennedy.

Playing such an iconic instrument came with a lot of pressure, however.

“I was off my fucking tits playing it, to be honest," he admits. “I used it for one song but was shitting myself the entire time. I didn’t want to break it, but on the other hand, if I did, that would have ended up being part of its story!”

This July, Yungblud launched his first-ever signature guitar, a black-and-white Epiphone SG inspired by his own ’64 Gibson SG Junior.

For more from Yungblud, plus new interviews with King Gizzard and Michael Schenker, pick up issue 389 of Total Guitar at Magazines Direct.