For a start the guitar defies fashion and style, whilst at the same time keeping its own style that is so timeless - yet it has outlasted so many other mundane things connected with the music its played the soundtrack too.( boy that was a mouthful!)
I once had an argument with my dad when building a table or chest or desk or something out of wood. I wanted to screw some piece of plastic to the side (hey -i was young) and he argued that you couldn't take amazing quality wood and just slam a piece of cheap plastic on top. It just wasn't allowed then or had it ever been allowed.. We argued till out of breath . I couldn't say how or why but i knew I'd seen it done before. We never met in the middle and I can't remember what happened to the table in the end, but later in life I realized whilst staring at a les Paul in some store somewhere in world..The Guitar defies all the rules and doesn't care!
It takes flame tops and solid Mahoganies, Sitka Spruces and rose woods, Maples and Ash and tiger striped Bubingas and Koa's and lays it beside tortoise shell plastics and silver shell, white 3 ply and metallic reds, ivories and black scratch guards and pickguards gracefully surrounding abalone ringed sound holes.
It has mixed the two since its inception and today still does. amazing rare priceless woods and plastic and IT WORKS!! its beautiful. Take a Les Paul and remove the scratch plate and pickup surrounds and it doesn't look like a Les Paul . The Fender Stratocaster with the beautiful sunburst that plays off against the tortoise shell pick guard.. The telecaster blond wood finish, its grain running the length of its body with a big chunk of white 3 ply plastic holding that pickup firmly in place, and no one says a thing.
Its like it snubs its nose at convention and it takes all it needs to make a guitar and make it work, and then it adds the final touch of chrome either in machine heads or humbucker covers.And thats what i love about guitars. there might be a lot of the same looking guitars out there now, a thousand strat or les paul copies, a million super strat pointy shred machines or artisan semiacoustic jazz bodys, but the players that buy adapt to there needs or play them until they are a one of a kind item.
The guitar is the instrument that travels with you. and doesn't leave your side. It grows with you and you learn its idiosyncrasies, the way it might buzz out on the 13fret or the volume pot only works halfway round. or the tuning pegs are so stiff and won't stay in tune. But they're the originals and 40 years old so theres no way your gonna ever replace them,
I don't know if other musicians get so attached to there instruments aside from bass-players. I mean a drummers kit has to work pretty dam perfectly to work at all,or sound good, a piano players piano always has to sound at its peak ultimate best, and most piano players have to leave there piano at home and tour with there electric set up of synths, and controllers and computers. And if that is a little troublesome then it has to be changed out.
But the guitar gets away with being broken and almost torture to play. Cut open fingers on rusty jagged bridges are common, fingers cut on frets lifting from chipped necks and the general lifelong shoulder pain of carrying a guitar on your strap thats in reality too heavy for any length of time. But we do it. We cherish every scar every pain seems well earnt, and we don't love our instruments less when they finish a tour and may have gotten a new battle scar from somewhere on the stage. Some people even pay extra these days for marks and scratches already worn into there guitars.
No matter what brand or model you start with on guitar ,most people I have spoken to have that one guitar or a few guitars in their head they dream of.. its the one they see when they hear that favorite band on the radio or they see the live show and see the instrument slung low , high or in-between on the band that just makes that guitar live up to every reason it was created....... I had mine..
I grew listening to a few bands almost incessantly, The Cure and The Clash. Dinosaur Jr and a singer called Billy Bragg. These are the bands that had guitar tones that just sounded like no other. I mean they probably did, they must have done. But I found there tones. I clutched these bands tightly as my own. And took delight sharing there recordings with my best friend in regular late night pool and beer sessions.
The way you could put onThe Cures " Faith " or " The Head On The Door" and sit there with the lights almost out and just hear that guitar of Robert Smiths chime out thru the speakers. That sublime mix of jazzmaster and Roland Jazz chorus , the use mix of delay and flanger, but mostly that tone.Chiming and glistening in its sonic sheen. It was haunting and just made their music what it was. It was sterile and maybe piercing at times but so were the songs, I can't imagine those old songs played with a different guitar players tone. It just wouldn't work.It just wouldn't !
And J Mascis who was my first real Guitar "solo" player i didn't think was overkill or pretensious. His band Dinosaur Jr helped were layered withfuzz and distortion at excessive volumes (such a high). Watching him standing in front of towering Marshall stacks on full volume and getting the best feedback still to this day,just sublime .
All out the same guitar that had helped Robert Smith cut his heart and let those songs cry out. it was amazing to have both bands in my head when I look at that guitar, the way it is so perfect for that haunting saddening songs at the same time made it a fuzz legend when you just dared to push the dial up not just a little but all the way on your amp. In some kind of irony Dinoasuar Jr even came to cover "Just Like Heaven" a Cure great! and you could never say they sound the same..haha
The clash, a rock and roll reggae mix up gone right.. grating stabbing guitars, Mick Jones and Joe Strummer beating there guitars into submission .The sound of the Les Paul Junior and most of all its P90 pickup cutting thru the white noise and drum rumble. Tho mick jones went on to play es 175's and les pauls standards he always had and still has a les paul junior somewhere near by- with its p90 ready to break free from its chain and bite some young child. ..and it bite me.. I wanted to get that tone.
I tried so many guitars I thought in my head could surely emulate it, and pedal after pedal.. I approached Micks tone like it was distortion based, clipping red hot over drive pedals mashing tones .. I mean every where i read that the Les paul Juniors were the cheap walmart of the Gibson family.
They were the cheaply made and barely outfitted guitar for the starter market, the student.. but on a magical day back in my teenage years i happened to have a 1959 red les paul Junior in my hands. (I wish to this day i had found the cash to buy it, sadly i didn't) I took the guitar and set up the same pedal i was using at home and plugged into a fender twin and before i turned the pedal on or dialed in the amp, I hit a chord and dam it if i didn't almost tremble with a feeling that is impossible to describe here. It was orgasmic maybe. It was like heaven opened and i heard its harps. this guitar snarled. You hit this thing and it snarled back. It was mid rangy and a little ragged.. it was red-hot and pushed the amp into that dirty stage and had such attack.. it was mick jones and billy bragg rolled into one. It was revolution and anarchy ,and the instrument you knew you could wave whatever flag you marched under from, pinned to its head stock..
The neck was heavy and thick, like a slab of hard wood so you really had to grab this thing. It wasn't dainty and it certainly wasn't one of this paper thin shred necks. You had to grab this guitar and grab it hard. You had to almost re learn to fret notes with your left hand . This guitar was like a freshly broken wild horse you had to show respect to.If you got lazy then this guitar would buck you and make you look a fool, but if you held on tight you could make this thing your own and then ride it to god knows where.
If you've ever played a real old Les Paul Junior you'll know what I mean. Its such a simple guitar, its basically the bare essentials, one pickup, a simple one ply pickguard, the amazing neck that finishes where it joins the body and 3 aside on a tree Klusons with old faded ivory tuning heads. but thats all you needed, not a amp with 3 gain stages or an array of pedals. just this rock and roll machine and a cable.
Billy Bragg played his thru an old roland cube and it still snarled and wailed, I watched him play to a mesmerized packed town hall with just his guitar and amp. And he made it really push your heart back in your chest and gasp for breath. Mick jones played his thru old mesa mark 1s and fenders but its that guitar that was the sound.
Then as I grew and I heard these indy bands that had all taken to the big gretsch hollow bodies and guitarists like Billy Duffy with his White falcon the guitar that was the most expensive in its day ( tho i heard it was the white penguin that was most expensive to be honest) and The strays cats, leading to find Bo Diddley and the rockabilly guys. Gretschs were there with that other tone on the frequency chart and a guitar that looked more like something more from the Cadillac line than a guitar shop. Big and shiny in all the right places, Filtertron pickups with there unique shape and look and DeArmond single coils with there distinctive logo ablaze over the front.. Grover Imperial tuning keys sparkling off that massive headstock that held a name that was synonymous with class.
If the snotty nosed street urchin played the Les Paul Junior then the aristocrat owned the Grestch. Tho over time I've seen some pretty angry bands play some pretty cool Gretschs.. Jesus and the Mary Chain being one,. Gretsch had an air of quality and were the kind of guitars that people always talked of saying.. "One day I'd love to own a Gretsch"
Whether it was the Tenneseen, or the Chet Atkins, the gretsch white falcon or Anniversary they all had that grestch twang.. heavily used amongst the country and rockabilly scene they still are the mainstay of Punk rock overlord Tim Armstrong, from Transplants and of course Rancid, he plays a right handed Country club, flipped over and played left handed, once natural wood colour now painted matt black its a beast of a guitar and it fires on all cylinders in his hands.
All this rant and emotion is all because of simple pieces of inanimate wood with a spool of wire round some metal and magnets, that without a cable and amp make no noise worth writing about.. but in the hands of their players ,those players express, sing and scream and shout down those wires and magnets. There internal voice screams down that cable and comes wailing out those speakers and hits you.... well it hits me.
I have never considered myself a great player.. certainly after the length of time i have been playing the damned instrument. maybe because in the times I was playing in bands more. I never owned the instruments my heart had really connected with. I had gone thru,Hamers, Westones, Corts, Emperadors, Diplomats and Diamonds, Ibanezs and Segovias, probably the odd Vester and Samick, all great guitars ...well not all great , in fact mostly average.. in fact some were just horrible. But i strapped each one on and plugged into whatever amp i had and just really went nowhere with my tone.
I didn't make the same tones that i had heard in my head, flowing out the headphones of my walkman or ebbing and pouring like mercury thru the night air from my boombox on my bedside table.These guitars were just guitars, and because of this fact i went thru them like boxer shorts.
It was only thru the magic of time that I finally got to live out my dreams or at least try attain a foot hold and own the instruments that I still listened to.
I had searched guitar stores across the staes for an olympic and tortoise shell Jazzmaster but had no luck , then most strangely I flew home and upon my first visit back to Bungalow Bills ( the shop i first worked in) there it was hanging on his wall.
I finally bought a Grestch. (A sadder tale) but upon my fathers death , with the money he left to me I sat for a while trying to figure out what to buy with it. I wanted something to remember him by and to keep him with me and it certainly wasn't mag wheels or a big screen tv, then i realized i could finally get that Gretsch i was always after, and I was lucky enough to find a respected dealer online in new York and took a punt on a guitar I'd never seen in the flesh let alone play.. and Its nothing short of an outstanding amazing guitar, even friends that have Grestch guitars comment on the natural sustain and tone and feel of the neck. All of this on top of the special place it has in my heart and my life as a living memory to my dad.
And i finally had to get the closest thing i could afford and find to that 1958 Les Paul Junior from my youth and my memory. These days a real 58 Les Paul Junior can fetch up to $10,000 dollars US. Its way way out my league. But I found Phil at Precision Guitar Kits online and bought the neck and body to assemble my own 58-59 Les Paul Junior. Cherry red with the closest pickup I can find to that old guitar, a seymour duncan Antiquity P90 and a fat fat baseball bat neck... This guitar has that snarl that you can't do much else with, but rock out.. Its Mick Jones and Billy Bragg in my hands. Its the like sound that you always remember if you've ever been in a car accident .... Its scary and almost violent... its a bulldog on a weak chain, you hope you can just hold onto it long enough before the chain breaks and your amp overloads into feedback at the show.. ITS HEAVEN!!! :)
And now i can get those tones out of my head into my cable and thru my speakers.. even tho i might not be playing with anyone else I can head to my workshop and plug in my jazzmaster and chuck on some Cure Album or even just start some drum loop or home recorded track and let the guitar do the talking as they say.. its subtle soliloquy filling the silence...layers of lush delayed strings falling upon one another and slipping echoing into the darkness ,like voices from a passing couple disappearing down the dark street behind you.
Or I plug in my Les Paul Junior and push myself to keep my rhythm hand in its gallop strum, palm muted and locked down. Pulling down so hard on the strings I fear my fingertips to split wide open around the strings. The grit and grunt from the slab of now chipped and scratched wood and the overdrive that just doesn't let up, every gap in strumming lets in the unescapable 60 cycle hum you just gotta put up with with P90's and when you finally out the guitar to bed you feel like you've just ran a marathon and had a full workout and your arms feel sore , and your hands feel like a guitarists should.
Or I plug in my Grestch and the beautiful mellow well rounded notes sparkle into life. big open ringing chords all breezy and breathy. that mid rangy top rolled off single notes, or the jazz box bottom end when you switch all the tops off and lay down some fat groove... nothing else sounds like it.
Again all these tones, memories, songs and moments created by a piece of wood with a piece of plastic stuck to it. Its so simple in construction really, they got it right so much the first time, the electric guitar hasn't really changed since. Sure they might be making carbon fibre or graphite guitars these days. They might have new space age magnets or robotic tuning heads.. but that unchangeable scale length neck be it 24.75 or 25.5 its steel strings and a pickup.. (and no the variax doesn't count, cos that just computer chips trying to sound like a pickup. ) sometimes a volume knob, sometimes just bare holes where the knob once sat. Its those things coming together in unison at the hands of musical genius or a kid straight off the streets with the notes written on the fret board or guitar neck. The sum of those parts have helped mould our lives with there music, they certainly moulded mine.
Some of use were so moved, to try make history of our own with these parts. I tried.. and left the odd track from the various bands i played in. But nothing that will inspire the next generation sadly.. well not yet. But I am still moved when i see these guitars, and I don't think everyone could know that feeling aside from other guitarists, why we love such pieces of trash and treasure.They don't have engines, or come from artisan builders all the time, there not always finely tuned but when we own them they become so much a part of us. And in some ways we are joined even if by the 7th degree to the Robert Smiths and J Mascis and Mick Jones and Billy Braggs.. we are a little closer than the other guy on the bus. We are connected by the way that there was a first day they bought those guitars ,or they came into their hands. And they first played them and they realized that day they had found the "one" that very special "one".
Gavin
