Hillel was seen playing this Gibson Les Paul guitar in the Red Hot Chili Peppers music video for the song “Fight Like a Brave,” and in a few rare photos taken during live gigs. Unfortunately, not much is known about the guitar. Hillel obviously liked and used the guitar, since he had a bunch of stickers on it.
He had a giant RHCP logo sticker on it and a gold foil sticker between the pickups (if you know who it is on the sticker, please leave a comment below). In some photos, the guitar also had an oval “D” (meaning Deutschland) sticker below the pickups, which was a standard sticker German cars had to have when traveling to other countries in Europe.
According to Hillel’s brother James, he took the guitar after Hillel died, and had it for a while, until it was stolen from his house.
Unfortunately, I had a house that I bought, which was an amazing house, right by Fairfax High, on Orange Grove, and it had those louver windows, which are the easiest for anybody to break into a house, you just pull down the metal tabs, slide the glass pieces, pull them out, five of them, and then you crawl in the house, so one day, I came home, my brother’s Gibson was stolen.
John Frusciante effects: JF EFFECTS INTERVIEWS: JAMES SLOVAK (HILLEL’S BROTHER) (2026)
Just recently, though, a picture popped up online showing a destroyed Les Paul with the exact same stickers as Hillel’s red one, except that this guitar was not solid red, but a burst model with yellow in the middle.
This photo apparently originated from the 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame event during which the RHCP were inducted, but not a lot more is known about what this guitar exactly is or what its origins are. If not for the yellow part on the body, one would assume this is the exact same guitar, especially since Hillel was never seen playing a burst Les Paul – just the red one.
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