"He Who Draws the Sword From the Stone..."

"...That One Guitar
Felt Good in his Hands..."

- Foreigner, "Juke Box Hero," from the album 4.

John Lennon would tell the story of seeing Elvis Presley on television singing and gyrating with a guitar strapped around him. The young Lennon watched the explosive Presley performance (with guitar-as-prop) and concluded "THAT looks like a good job to have!"

I've read that it was difficult to find a guitar in a music store after the Beatles performed on the Ed Sullivan show. I'm not surprised.

It is funny to observe how frequently both rock and country musicians (who specialize in musical forms which emphasize the guitar) hearken to imagery stereotypical of the old west. The musician with a guitar slung low against his hip is, in some way, an update of the mythological gunslinger of a fabled old west. The imagery is iconic, masculine, and sexually potent in its use of the the guitar or the gun as phallus. The guitar, like the gun, becomes an extension of the man - an additional limb which reveals much about the nature of the man himself.

Neil Young speaks poetically about the manner in which Jimi Hendrix played his guitar. Young beleives that Hendrix played his guitar sensually, as if it were a woman giving off energy with every touch. B.B. King has famously named his guitar Lucille, and speaks of it - her - as a companion that has seen and participated in his journey from cotton fields to fame and fortune. Musicians form relationships with their guitars, and the variety of available guitars offers many unique sounds and unique personalities.

I don't think I've ever seen a picture of Springsteen holding anything but a trusty Fender Telecaster. I'm not sure I'd want to see him holding anything else. That Telecaster is an important part of his sound, his style, his philosophy, and his personality. If you look at a photo of the guitar itself, it is exactly the guitar you would expect him to use if you know anything about the man at all. Although Hendrix played a Gibson Flying V and even played around with a Les Paul, his most iconic guitar is the creamy Fender Strat flipped upside down to accomodate his southpaw status. Eddie Van Halen put together one of the most famous guitars in history - dubbed "Frankenstein," famous for it's random white striping on top of a blood red base. Like Dizzy Gillespie's unique trumpet (whose horn aimed upward at the heavens) these guitars are not merely iconic visually, they are the instruments which contributed to and represent the singular unique sounds - the "tone" - of their player. Eric Clapton and his custom Fender Strat. Tom Scholz and his vintage gold-top Les Paul(s). Angus Young and his Gibson SG. John Lee Hooker and his Epiphone Sheraton II. Stevie Ray Vaughan and the custom Strat that bears his initials. Bo Diddley and his cigar box guitar. Even Paul McCartney and his beloved Hofner bass. To see a player of such esteem with their iconic instrument in their hands is an image so deeply engrained and so utterly comfortable that it is like running into an old friend who is still with the partner whom you feel is perfect for them. The thought of seeing Springsteen holding a Paul Reed Smith guitar - nice as they are - is akin to spotting a friend being unfaithful to his significant other. The Telecaster is Springsteen's soul mate.

And yes, there are some guitarists who "play the field" in spite of the fact that you might have a favorite guitar of theirs that you'd like to see them commit to (David Gilmour and his Strat), while other guitarists seem to fall for a certain type, but not a specific individual (Slash's fondness for a variety of Les Pauls).

All said, the guitar is more than a mere instrument. It is a statement, a companion, an extension of the individual, a medium of artistic expression, a meaningful device of beauty and mystery. A soul mate. Like Kane's "Rosebud," a musician's guitar is an enigma that both reveals much about the player while refusing to divulge secrets. It says a lot without having to say anything. Stare into it and it stares back into you. It is incapable of lying.


My first guitar was a gift. I was maybe eleven or twelve years old and delivered newspapers every afternoon after school. Several of my customers were businesses, and my paper route allowed me to meet and get to know many of my customers through daily interaction. Much of my route was in the historic district of Carson City, Nevada, which meant that I got to know the owners of some pretty cool and historic buildings (such as the Abraham Curry house) as well as a Protestant minister, the owners of a wedding chapel, and the people at Adele's restaurant (the most upscale restaurant in Carson City at the time - and quite possibly still - I remember that their hot chocolate was to die for), the proprietor of the Old Globe Saloon, the owners of a downbeat hotel, and a realtor named Roberta Cave who was both a lovely person and somewhat of a local celebrity due to her pervasive advertising.

But my favorite place to deliver to was, by far, Carson Mortgage Company. Its owner was a man named Steven Griggs, and over time we developed a good rapport and a strong friendship. On some days, it would take me as long as forty-five minutes to deliver his newspaper because I would sit in his office and we would talk about music and movies and whatever was going on in the world. He was somewhat of a mentor to me, although not as much in matters of career or even life as much as in attitude and approach. He seemed to strike a good balance between fulfilling his professional role and not losing sight of having fun with life. He drove a Porsche, had a nice house up in the hills, and played a really loud guitar through a Marshall stack. I admired the guy, and even when I look back on it now I can't help but think that he was (and remains) one of the coolest people I have ever met.

One cold day in February my mother was driving me around on my paper route, and when I went into Carson Mortage to deliver the paper, Mr. Griggs went outside to talk to my mom. Of course, he played it down so I thought nothing of it, but on my next birthday when I went into Carson Mortgage to deliver the newspaper, I was handed a beautiful nylon string acoustic guitar. My gift from Mr. Griggs, with my mother's permission. I took it home, learned how to tune it, and spent some of my paper route money on songbooks with pictures of guitar chords in them. That was the beginning of a long and meaningful relationship with the guitar. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you Steven Griggs, you wonderful man, wherever you are, for helping to get me started down this challenging and rewarding path.

It would be years before I "went electric." In fact, I wouldn't pick up a new guitar until the summer after my freshman year at college. I was completely ignorant about guitars, but was starting to have ambitions about recording songs and knew that I would need an electric. I picked out an entry-level Strat knockoff made by a company called J.B. Player. I think I was attracted to its seafoam green color. In fact, I know that I was. Knew nothing about the guitar, but made my decision based purely on an initial attraction - love at first sight. As an entry-level guitar, it wasn't really of the highest quality - it's "locking tuning system," supposedly modeled after a Floyd Rose, made tuning the guitar quite impossible and I ended up having to remove most of it. And it had some annoying buzzes that needed to be addressed, but that's pretty much to be expected from any cheap guitar. It doesn't stay in tune very well, needs constant tweaking, and has almost no sustain, but it is funky as hell and a LOT of fun to play! I've bashed away on this thing for decades now and I just love it. When I was in a band in college, I actually went shopping for an outfit that matched the colors of my guitar!

In the late '90's, I hot-rodded it by replacing the pickups with some top-of-the-line EMG's, adding active electronics (also by EMG), and adding a Roland GK-2A pickup which, when plugged into Roland's VG-8 guitar modeling system, allows me access to an incredible range of sounds. Of course, the aspects of the guitar which are problematic are not magically cured by all of the hot-rodding: it still struggles to stay in tune and doesn't have the ability to really hold a note much longer than a few seconds. But the sounds I can get out of it - oh yeah.

A few years later, I purchased an actual Fender Strat with the Roland pickup built in. The Strat is free of the buzzing, tuning and sustain problems that haunt the J.B. Player, and while it technically surpasses the Player in just about every way, it seems colder and less affectionate. The Player is like my first girlfriend, and I romanticise her and feel nostalgic about our time together.

I've been using both on my recordings thus far, but sadly it has become obvious to me that the Player is, after over twenty years together, calling it quits. The tremolo system has weakened to the point that, while tuning the strings, the tremolo rises from the body of the guitar and raises the action of the strings so far away from the pickups that an unsatisfactory level of noise is now inherant in the signal, rendering the guitar essentially unusable. I have thought about replacing the tremolo, but the system on this guitar is exclusive to this model, no longer made, and required that a hole be hollowed out of the body in order to accomodate the tremolo system that pretty much makes it impossible to install any other tremolo. This problem is not fixable. The J.B. Player is dead.

But wait! If I buy a new guitar body, I can switch the pickups and all of the hot-rodded electronics onto the new body and have whatever tremolo system I wish. Further, if I get a new neck I can solve the buzzing problems and if I get new tuning keys I can solve the tuning problems. I won't know what kind of sustain I'll be able to get until I piece this thing together. So essentially, I'll inject new life into this guitar, and even think of it as my original guitar in spite of the fact that, over time, I've replaced every single part so that nothing of the original guitar, with the exception of the pickup switch, remains. If I pull this off, I'm naming this guitar "Cher."

Guess what? I found a Fender Strat body in seafoam green. I've got you, babe.

Of course, I don't know if this will work. My attempt at building Cher could very well result in an abomination that should never have been brought back to life, like something out of "Pet Sematary." It may very well be that my J.B. Player will never sing again.

In the meantime, in spite of the fact that I hope to resurrect my lovely seafoam green guitar, I realize that I can't count on her coming back or being the same, and I've been looking, out of necessity, at a new guitar. It's beautiful. And when I say beautiful, I mean out-of-my-league kind of beautiful. "Who does he think he is" kind of beautiful. "He doesn't deserve her" kind of beautiful. "Is she really going out with him" kind of beautiful. I'm talking Ric Ocasek and Paulina Porizkova, Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett, Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton "what in the hell is a hottie like THAT doing with a guy like HIM" kind of beautiful.

And you know what? Everybody can go jump in the lake because I'm gonna take her home and I'm gonna consummate the relationship. And I'm gonna take pictures and put them on the internet for everybody to see. I don't know if she's going to be my soul mate, but she sure as hell is a trophy.

Excalibur, drawn from the stone. May I prove worthy to receive.