That one has two Mojotone pickups, so it’s great for all your Leslie West/P-90 needs.” SIB Varidrive It has a sub-group, which is the Dirtbike Royale. The colour is based on the dirtbike I had as a kid. It’s like when you show up at a gig with just a guitar and an amp – you’re ‘dirtbiking’ it.

“The third Reverend is the Dirtbike, which has just the essentials you need in a guitar. If I had to name a desert-island guitar, I would grab this one. It’s got a lot of great features that allow me to explore many different tone areas, and it’s semi-hollow but without f-holes. I needed something with more subtlety – or should I say, it encouraged me to be more subtle. “There’s also the Reeves Gabrels Spacehawk, which I designed with Joe Naylor after I joined The Cure. Or put it another way: when I want it, I have to have it. The RG-SUS is the sub-group of that model – it has a Sustainer in it, which is something I can’t live without. There’s the RG-1, which is the first guitar I did with Reverend. “This is more than one item but I’ll include them all here. The only way people could pigeonhole me was by saying, ‘Oh, he’s probably going to sound progressive’, which I could deal with.” They were new models and nobody associated them with other players. That’s why I was attracted to Parker and Steinberger guitars when they came out. If you play a Les Paul, they think Jimmy Page or Slash, and so on. If you pick up a Strat, people expect Hendrix or Beck – or John Mayer even. “Instruments have a way of playing ascribed to them. “I try to find tools that don’t have much history,” he says. Gabrels’ principles also extend to his choice of guitars and gear. I try to avoid the past, but the present is already the past.” I try to be a little more elusive, I guess. “Some guitarists you can figure out in a second, and you know exactly which records they’ve listened to. “That’s pretty much my philosophy,” he says.

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There’s always been something of an elusive quality to his playing: you can never quite pinpoint his references, and his style and sound seem to bear little, if any, relation to the past. Throughout his storied career, beginning with his decade-long association with David Bowie and now as a member of The Cure, Reeves Gabrels has distinguished himself as one of the most versatile, adventurous and exciting guitarists of the modern age.

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