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The co-founder of the seminal Texas blues-rock band wanted to visit the Les Paul exhibit at the Mahwah Museum, catch up with township Mayor Jim Wysocki and help his fellow guitarist with a documentary about the mayor's longtime friendship with the legendary Paul.
Wysocki presented Gibbons with the key to the township, along with a prized possession from his own impressive collection: a pick that once belonged to another guitar legend, Django Reinhardt.
"You can't give this to me," the 72-year-old blues-boogie axman from Texas told Wysocki while hanging out at the mayor's home on Thursday, Oct. 20.
"I just did," Wysocki replied.
"What a cool guy," the mayor said later.
The long-bearded, braided-cap rock star with the gravelly "how-how-how-how" baritone went way back with the Wisconsin-born Paul, a jazz, country, and blues instrumentalist, songwriter and solid-body guitar inventor who lived and maintained a home in Mahwah for nearly 60 years.
Gibbons, who's listed among Rolling Stone's greatest guitarists of all time, helped create ZZ Top's distinctive biker-bar sound with a sunburst 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard guitar that he bought for $250 eons ago from a farmer in Houston.
He named the guitar Pearly Gates after a jalopy he sold to buy it, once telling an interviewer that "you gotta have the right guns when you enter the town of tone."
Gibbons played Pearly Gates on a cover of the Moon Martin song "Bad Case of Loving You" (made famous by Robert Palmer) for the album "Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played," recorded in celebration of Paul's 90th birthday in 2005. Paul died four years later.
There's also a legendary clip of Gibbons jamming with his idol in what was once a cramped club in Manhattan where Paul was also visited by Joe Walsh and Queen's Brian May, among others.
Wysocki was grateful for Gibbons's participation in the documentary he's making about a decades-long friendship with Paul. It also includes the late Eddie Van Halen, Barry Goudreau from the rock band Boston and drummer Paul Geary from Extreme.
Gibbons said he was also putting the mayor on the guest list, plus one, for ZZ Top's show at 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 21 at the Ovation Hall at Ocean Casino Resort.
ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill's death during a tour last year was a blow, but guitar tech Elmwood Francis -- who'd been considered a fourth Beatle, of sorts -- has more than admirably stepped in as "That Little Ol’ Band From Texas” surfs a half-century of material on the "Raw Whiskey' tour with Austin Meade.
There are still tickets available, by the way: ZZ Top at Ocean Casino Resort (Ticketmaster)
You can also visit the Les Paul exhibit at the Mahwah Museum -- which features an amazing collection of instruments and equipment -- and even play a Les Paul guitar.
GO TO: Play a Les Paul (Mahwah Museum)
MORE INFO: Mahwah Museum
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