This week, we learned that Gibson Brands’ Board of Directors has confirmed Cesar Gueikian in the position of the company’s President and CEO.

Rock fans are well aware that in the realm of electric guitars, Gibson is the same as Mercedes Benz in the automotive industry. Cesar Gueikian is an Argentinian-Armenian, he received two higher educations in business management, but he has always been obsessed with music and plays guitar. In 2021, he joined Armenia Fund’s telethon, speaking about the horrors of the 2020 war.

Since Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi was among the musicians who welcomed Gueikian’s appointment, I reached out to his manager asking if possible to help contact the new head of Gibson Brands for an interview.

Let’s hope it will work out, especially considering our previous successful cooperation in the Iommi-Gibson-Mediamax format. In 2019, ahead of Ian Gillan and Tony Iommi’s visit, we organized the Iommi_Gibson_Mediamax contest, the winner of which became Khoren Mikayelyan. During the gala evening dedicated to the 30th anniversary of Rock Aid Armenia, Tony Iommi presented Khoren with his autographed Gibson SG Standard 2019 Ebony guitar.

Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page also plays Gibson. Led Zeppelin might not have reached the pinnacle of world fame if it were not for Turkish-born Ahmet Ertegun, the co-founder and president of the American studio Atlantic Records. It was Ertegun who recognized Led Zeppelin’s potential after hearing the band’s demo recording. Forming an alliance with the group’s manager Peter Grant, Ahmet Ertegun took care of Led Zeppelin for many years.

At one time, Ahmet Ertegun financed various initiatives that denied the Armenian Genocide, a mission he inherited from his father Mehmet Ertegun. In the 1930s, Mehmet Ertegun, the Turkish ambassador to the United States, worked hard to get the US State Department to “convince” MGM to abandon the idea of making a film based on Franz Werfel’s book “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh”.

But, as Harut Sassounian and Serj Tankian testified after Ahmet Ertegun’s death, in the last years of his life, he said that Turkey should recognize the Armenian Genocide. However, he refrained from talking about it publicly.

The last time Led Zeppelin members and late John Bonham’s son appeared on stage together was at the concert dedicated to the memory of Ahmet Ertegun. It was on December 10, 2007. This performance of Kashmir is from that concert.



Ara Tadevosyan is the Director of Mediamax.