Even in the non-conformist Sixties, Zalman Yanovsky stood out from the crowd, with his boho-hobo-cowboy fashion sense, clownish on-stage antics, and the warped, wavy contours of his Guild S-200 Thunderbird. Like Zal himself, it was a guitar ahead of its time, complete with a “kickstand” built into the back body. If you were serious about rock guitar in the mid-Sixties, Yanovsky is a guitarist you were serious about.
He was an early adopter of the Thunderbird, and the broad range of tonal colors he could achieve with that guitar inspired Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen to get his own Thunderbird, which he played on the landmark psychedelic tracks White Rabbit and Somebody to Love, from Jefferson Airplane's 1967 album, Surrealistic Pillow.
“[Zal] was a great player, so of course I checked out his gear,” Kaukonen later recalled. “The T-Bird was one of the most different-looking guitars I had ever seen… I also bought a Standel Super Imperial [amp] because Zal was playing through one.”
