The guitar survived the fall out of the trailer (thanks to the Gibson Chainsaw Guitar Case it was in) and a guy in Texas picked it up off the road, assuming it was just a regular Zakk Wylde Signature Les Paul that bore some scars from years of abuse. I didn’t know how long I would have the gig, so I made my mark on history … I wrote in Sharpie inside the pickup cavity “ZW” and in the other “Thank You Zakk for the Gig. Finally setting The Grail up and changing its pickups was one of my first jobs after I got the gig with Zakk. I remember seeing that guitar up close as a stagehand in Pittsburgh, long before I had become Zakk’s guitar tech.
I thought to myself if I had been there, this would never have happened. I was not there to lock the trailer and when I heard the news, I was heartbroken. Now, it was sitting in a ditch somewhere in Texas. “The Grail was Zakk’s most famous guitar and he used it on every album he recorded,” Fred told us. Happily, the guitar was later recovered, thanks in no small part to some secret graffiti that Kowalo had done on the guitar to make it more easily identifiable. During the drive from one to the next show, the door came open and several pieces of gear fell out of the trailer and were strewn across a highway in Texas. The guitar was put into the band’s trailer after a gig, and someone forgot to lock it. The loss of Zakk’s beloved original 1981 bullseye Les Paul Custom (better known as “The Grail”) occurred during a stint when Zakk’s regular tech, Fred Kowalo, took some time off after the birth of his daughter.
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