Rumors of the death of the guitar solo are always greatly exaggerated, and the 2025 Grammys’ most talked-about performance saw guitar take center stage yet again.
In a sign of changing times, however, the axeslinger was not a grizzled classic rock veteran, but a 24-year-old Venezuelan on a giant pony. Chappell Roan’s Grammy performance of Pink Pony Club was an explosion of overstatement, camp excess, and fret-melting guitar.
Last week, Guitar World revealed that Gibson custom-made a mirrorball Les Paul specially for that performance, so we caught up with guitarist Andrea Ferrero for a behind-the-scenes look.
If Chappell Roan’s journey from cult status to megastardom has been meteoric, Ferrero’s rise has been similarly stellar. Last time we spoke to Andrea, she had crowdfunded her way from Venezuela to the Berklee College of Music, lost all her possessions when her apartment building caught fire and recovered to become a guitarist at Adam Sandler’s production company.
Ferrero says she didn’t know about the mirrorball guitar in advance. “The only thing I knew was that we were gonna play Pink Pony Club. When I got there they told me, ‘You're gonna stand on this huge pink pony and play the solo with the disco ball guitar.’ I had no idea until I got to that first rehearsal and I saw the guitar. I was like, ‘This is gonna be sick.’”
The guitar was based on a Gibson Les Paul Special Tribute model. It has a wraparound bridge, vintage output 490R/490T pickups, and a slimmed-down mahogany body with a flat top. The only other modifications are the chrome knobs and pickups selector.
“They told me Gibson got very last-minute notice,” admits Ferrero. “I think they told them four days before the performance. I know they were working on the guitar nonstop.”
Although the band had already played the song dozens of times on tour, they still had a grueling preparation for the performance. As former Chappell Roan guitarist Devon Eisenbarger told us last year, Chappell’s live performances have a raw live band feel. The Grammy performance was entirely choreographed, with marks for the musicians to hit throughout the song.
“The band had four days of rehearsal,” says Andrea. “I know the dancers were rehearsing for like a week, and I have no idea how long the entire production took. We had the easy part!”
The climactic part of that choreography, for guitar fans at least, saw Ferrero climbing atop a giant pink pony for that solo. The day of the show was a whirlwind.
“We did soundcheck the day of the show, early in the morning. We basically ran the whole Grammys in the morning, and then we had the afternoon to get ready,” she remembers.
Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess has many guitar-centered moments, and Roan is particular about how the parts are played.
“She really wants the guitar to sound exactly or very, very similar to the recordings,” Andrea explains. “That Pink Pony Club solo – she is very picky with that. She wants the way I play it and the tone very similar to her recording, especially because it's such an epic solo. She’s very picky with those things. It's awesome to work with her. She’s an inspiration.”
As on so many TV performances, the guitar tone was all digital. “I used the same thing [we use live], a Kemper,” Andrea reveals.
“For Pink Pony Club, I’ve got multiple rigs: one is a clean tone with an auto swell, another is a distorted sound, a clean with more reverb, and a lead tone for the solo. My favorite is the distorted tone I use for the chorus and solo, which comes from the EVH 5150 III channel 2. The clean tone is a Matchless SC30 profile.”
Although Ferrero is usually seen with a Fender, she found the Les Paul immediately familiar: “When I first started playing, I would only play Gibson or Epiphone, because I loved Slash. Then I switched to Fender. It's a different sound and the way it feels is so different, but I like playing all of them.”
After the show, the Les Paul was whisked away, and its current whereabouts are unknown. “I don't know where it is now, but I want to keep it as a memory, and also because it sounds so good!” laughs Andrea. “I feel like [Chappell Roan and her band] should always have it, at least just for Pink Pony Club.”
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