“I saw the Red Special. I pointed and said, ‘Is that it?’ Brian said, ‘Yup. Want to try it?’” Steve Vai says he once played Brian May’s guitar “like a baby giraffe on roller skates” – now the Queen icon has gifted him his own custom ‘Green’ Red Special

Brian May has given Steve Vai the gift of a lifetime. It’s a Red Special replica, custom built by Andrew Guyton, with some signature Vai-style twists on the Queen guitarist’s DIY custom electric guitar – not least a change of colour, reimagining the O.G. Red Special as the ‘Green’ Red Special.

“I own a lot of guitars, but this one stands alone. Its soul and history are baked into it and topped with a healthy smattering of love,” says Vai, writing on his Instagram account. “I will treasure it for the rest of my life, and yes, I’m taking this one to the grave with me.”

Vai is not the only high-profile recipient of a Guyton-built Red Special replica from May. Just before Christmas, Tony Iommi received a Red Special built to the exact specifications as May’s original, only with the neck profile based on Iommi’s Jaydee Old Boy SG-style electric.

Vai’s ‘Green’ Red Special is a more radical take on the instrument, with the jumbo EVO-gold frets, yin-yan inlays on the birds-eye maple fingerboard, and that translucent Green finish revealing all the eye-popping details in its quilted maple top.

But like Iommi’s Red Special, perhaps the most significant update to the Red Special formula is the neck, with Guytone giving Vai’s instrument a mahogany neck that’s shaped a little more like those he would find on his Ibanez signature guitars – and this is definitely for the best, because Vai has a little history with the Red Special.

“In the 1970s, when I was a kid in Carle Place trying to figure out how to play anything in tune, Brian May was one of my absolute heroes,” writes Vai. “His tone and touch oozed of rock and roll class, and the songs he wrote and the notes he chose dug deep into my psyche and helped shape a future fantasy image of myself in my mind.”

The Red Special played a starring role in this fantasy. Vai even entertained ideas of making his own guitar. A “total lack of expertise” put paid to that. But still, the Red Special was the one. More than a guitar, it was “a mythical object, an alchemical wand built by a young genius and his dad”. Growing up, Vai studied everything about it. Little did he know he would get his hands on it, and sooner rather than later. He got his chance not long after moving from to the West Coast in 1980.

“At 20 years old I move to LA, landed a tiny apartment at Fairfax and Sunset, start working with Frank Zappa, and one night I walk into the Rainbow Bar and Grill and see Brian just standing there. Alone. Like a normal human,” says Vai. “I thought I was hallucinating.”

He was not. And being a 20-year-old kid Vai said hello. May being May, i.e. a mensch, he “did the unthinkable” and invited Vai to Queen’s rehearsal, where he got to see the Red Special up close.

“Sitting in a room with the entire band was already unreal enough, but then I saw the Red Special. I pointed and said, ‘Is that it?’ Brian said, ‘Yup. Want to try it?’ Time definitely slowed down,” recalls Vai.

This was his chance. But as is often the case, our imagination doesn’t meet reality. The Red Special is like Thor’s Hammer, an Excalibur built from the ground up and tailored to May’s unique playing style. It felt weird in Vai’s hands.

“After idolising that guitar my whole youth, holding it was seismic,” continues Vai. ‘I thought, ‘This is it, I’m finally going to sound like Brian May.’ But much to my chagrin, I didn’t of course. I sounded like me. And between the gauge .08 strings, ultra-low action, and a neck the size of a small tree, I played it like a baby giraffe on roller skates. Still, it was heaven.”

Vai never forgot that moment. Neither did May, though he did forget some of the details. In 1991, when the pair were playing Guitar Legends in Spain, May was recounting the story of when one of Zappa’s young protégés came to a Queen rehearsal and played the Red Special, “who who played amazingly well”. Vai kept his powder dry.

“I let him tell me the whole story and then said… ‘Brian, that was me.’ This stands as one of the most satisfying full-circle twists the universe has offered me,” writes Vai.

And now he has another, a ‘Green’ Red Special, one of one, “beyond beautiful” – and a guitar that Vai finds a little easier to play.

“It somehow honours the spirit of the Red Special while allowing me to feel completely at home inside it,” writes Vai. “Must be the green.”