“It’s anti-climatic. Kurt trying to break a guitar—it takes him 15 minutes. By the time it’s over, it’s like, big deal. I think that’s guitar murder. I think guitars have souls.”
In his disarmingly insightful, well written memoir, One Train Later, Police guitarist Andy Summers observes the beat up-looking Fender Telecaster in his hands at the height of the Police’s career in 1983…
“It is with this guitar, this mangled old thing I bought in 1972 off a kid in L.A. for two hundred dollars that I have made the journey… There’s something about this guitar… I suppose I should have a shiny new guitar—I get offered one about every five minutes now—but I love it, this old relic: it has soul. Someone once said to me that like a woman, you get only one real guitar in your life. For me, it’s this 1961 Tele.”
For me, one of the worst things about being a musician is having to listen to colleagues drone on too long about gear: the various pickups, amplitude, wattage, tubes, pedals, Humbuckers, amps and mics we buy, sell and trade—especially when I’m waiting for my turn.
But seriously… Even I—a dedicated advocate of the low-budget, always-err-on-the-conservative-side approach to recording, a guitar player who doesn’t own an amp at the present time—understand what fuels it, especially with regard to instruments and, sometimes understandably, amps. It’s the search for our gear soulmate.
The first guitar I bought in my early 20s was a red Fender Squier—basically a Japanese-made, imitation Strat—for something like $99. Once I got a bit more serious, I spent a bit more on a lower-end version of Andy Summer’s signature Tele, right down to the deep “sunburst” paint job. A few months after that I bought my first real Strat off a fast-talking local hero, but I didn’t realize at the time that the odd, cueball-white hue and back-breaking weight made it not right for me. A brand-new moss-green Strat followed, which, after our pleasant-enough summer fling, was soon dispassionately replaced by…
The point is, I probably went through about 10-12 guitars before I found my guitar soulmate—my precious sunburst Fender Strat—about 10 years after buying that first Squier. Not a day goes by where I don’t sweep her up off her Ultimate guitar stand, gently caress her frets and thank my lucky stars we found one another.
You see, my Strat soulmate was once another man’s woman. Maybe that’s what made me covet her at first. He was already taking good care of her as guitar player in a band I was drummer in, and he was good. These things help; they add to the envy and mystique. I always wanted the guitar and asked him if he’d be willing to let her go. No, he said, but… maybe… No, I don’t think so. But I’d be patient. I’d wait. Somehow, deep down, I knew we’d end up together. Someday I knew she’d be mine. When it came time for him to move, he was ready to sell.
A similar thing happened with my drum kit: I went through several in my 20s, but I ended up with the one I was supposed to be with. I bought it around 2001, sold it about two years later when I moved to San Francisco, called the buyer about four years later and he agreed to sell it back to me. We’ve been happy together ever since.
It’s funny how these things work, how they are a bit like romances: You have to be searching but wait for it. You’ll know it when you see it. It’s something you can’t hurry or force—it just happens.
The moral is that guitars—and yes, perhaps drum kits, amps and other stuff, too—have souls. They must. How else can one explain that subconscious tug of fate, destiny and longing that precedes the long marriage between musician and his musical soulmate? If you’ve been lucky enough for it to happen to you—and if you’ve been a musician long enough, it has—you feel that undeniable connection between you and your guitar, the trailing remnants of past owners, shows, lives. It’s as inescapable as the sinking feeling you get when the relationship with your perfectly nice cueball-white Strat just isn’t working out.
I learned another related, important lesson from all that buying and trading that went on in my 20s, something I’m sure a lot of young musicians also don’t get until they’re older: Do not sell gear you like. Firstly, you’ll lose a lot of money as I did buying and selling gear at a loss when you really need it and the cash, respectively. Everybody has lost loves, and mine is the first drum kit I bought and sold to fund my hasty move to New York City upon graduating college. I had painted a striking full-color Wolverine on the drum head, essentially learned to play drums on it, and knew I shouldn’t sell it. I just needed the money. And that’s a bad reason to abandon someone you love.
Anyway… apologies for droning on about gear…
=========================
Read more about gear—where to find it, what to start out with, how to hook it up, what to upgrade it and more—in the “Gear” chapter of Indie Rock 101. Got a good gear story? It’s your turn… send it to me at rich@indierock101.com. Read more hyperlinked blog posts and sign up for the RSS feed and email newsletter at www.indierock101.com
No comments:
Post a Comment