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We’ve seen them before. Some articles seem to be written by people whose primary fixation in life is “me, me, me.”
Everything they experience is viewed through the same me-colored lens, which, with its haze of scratches and
fingerprints from excessive vanity, makes the most trifling of life’s events seem ageless, even grand.
This is one of those articles.
Hold on, though. There’s more to it than that. This is the story of a personal journey through the world of music
that begins humbly and ends just as humbly as it started. The fact that your reporter (should I say “moi”?) has
experienced it at all is amazing enough, for under any other circumstances I might not have found myself in
circumstances that presented so ripe an opportunity to learn and understand that most sensuous, invigorating,
physically challenging and just plain righteous of musical instruments: the guitar.
Guitarists: Defining the Breeds
The world of the guitar, from what I’ve seen of the various “shows” held here and there, is populated with
individuals whom one could classify into three types: There are collectors who couldn’t give a damn about playing
but are attracted by aesthetic or monetary value; there are players who’d probably be better off collecting; and
there are those who appreciate how truly awful it is to play poorly and therefore practice like hell out of fear
that one day they’ll awaken to find they’re a better fit for category two. (For a hint, reread this paragraph.)
I am one of the individuals from the third category. I live to play the guitar, and if it weren’t for the fact
that I’m a responsible adult I’d play the guitar night and day. Actually, it’s as much the music as the instrument –
maybe more. Put it this way: To play really well, and play like you mean it, you have to dig in to that fretboard.
You have to drive the sludge of misguided assumption and fear out of your hands and out of your brain. To do that
takes commitment. It isn’t for babies.
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Think about it. To play your best means sacrificing those precious hours in front of the flat-screen, where you
might otherwise be perfectly happy growing a big TV butt and shrinking your brain while undertalented, overpaid
inflata-babes drive up the advertising revenues and your reserves of testosterone. However, to get to the point
where you know that what you’re playing is meaningful and clear of hype. To do that, you’ll have to take your
treasured six-stringer through neighborhoods you don’t want to live in . . . at least, not permanently.
If you want to play well, practice hard. That’s what I learned early on in my adventure. On the path I’ve taken,
there were players with minds to match their hands; people who saved the partying for after the gig, not before it;
people who worked and worked and worked and worked at being better musicians, better thinkers and better teachers.
I’ve been fortunate to know these people, and I’ve applied those lessons throughout my career as a journalist and
musician.
The Twin Horizons
I soon learned that the many possibilities within the timber of the guitar would establish a certain mark upon
which I could focus my own musical efforts. That mark became a line that separated what I was capable of from
what I wasn’t yet capable of doing, so in that sense the mark was like the horizon itself. For instance, I knew
from the first moment I touched a guitar that it was what I wanted, but it was when I found myself in a circle of
very expressive players that I knew the instrument would always hold more than my efforts could reveal. That’s
what the guitar is, though. It’s a mystery, or a kind of kaleidoscope. The more you turn it and twist it, the
more it displays its infinite randomness and potential. And that’s what makes it so damn fun to play. But the
more you play, the more the guitar becomes a philosophy. It’s an approach to listening—a way of sensing and
feeling—that lets you know it’s okay to strive and fail before you try and succeed. In that way the guitar is
one of the world’s great gifts, which is why so many talented artists have told me that their songs and solos
seem to appear from out of nowhere. A good friend recently said there’s no such thing as musical genius. Instead,
he said, there’s only the act of channeling from a sphere of creativity that’s far too big for one mind to perceive
or identify. It made sense to me. Certainly it’d be more fun to pull some incredible theme out of thin air, or maybe
out of a dream, than to feel it was some godlike and wholly intentional act: “That’s it, I’ve done it. I’ve just
produced another masterpiece, the likes of which the world shall not see a-gain.” There’s way too much pressure in
that. It’ll give you acne.
Well, on with the story. You’ll be impressed, I think, because it’s entirely true and free of exaggeration. It might
be a bit more intense than what you’ve experienced on your trip, but then it might not be. After all, the story is
really more about the experiences than about—well, moi—so the commonalities will reveal themselves as I relate the
events. But hopefully those events will help us define a new philosophy, based partly on the old ones but enriched
with something newer and less moi-centric. Here goes:
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It was a long time ago that I began to play the guitar. I was in the eighth grade, and George Harrison's "My
Sweet Lord" was all over the radio. I'd already learned to play the drums, but since there was little chance
that my parents would allow a second set of tubs in the house (the drums belonged to an older brother), I
figured my chances would be better with the more compact and more "affordable" guitar. There was one of those
in the house too, and it belonged to another brother. I'd been watching him for quite a while, experimenting
with his little Orpheus tiger-striped acoustic in the rare dogpoop sunburst. Actually, what I really wanted most
was just to pluck those six strings from low to high and follow with a single strum, which was a symbol of the
old "Peter Gunn" TV show. Anyway, Guitar Brother eventually relinquished the Orpheus, but rather than deciding
I should keep and treasure it the aforementioned two jerks joined with still another brother in destroying it.
(Perhaps my oldest brother would have stopped them if he were there. No, he’s classically educated and hates
rock ‘n’ roll, so he would’ve helped ‘em.) Hey, but at least it was fun to watch. It also showed me, right at
the start of my life as a guitar addict, that there’s always another deal to be had somewhere. So, having owned
the Orpheus only a matter of hours and suddenly finding myself without it, I became immersed in the culture of
hunter-gatherers. Guitar Bro’ moved up to a Japanese-built Orlando classical, and I got a neighbor's cast-off
Mexican gut-string with the "Missing Tuner Button" feature.
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One day Guitar Bro’ came home with a replacement for his Orlando, but this one wasn't about to find itself skewered
over a piece of rebar like the Orpheus had. It was a '63 Gibson Hummingbird in mint--and I mean mint--condition,
which had been closeted for eight years by a guy who couldn't stand the thought of scratching it. (His everyday
guitar was a Martin.) From the moment I heard that H-bird, with its thunderous and metallic bass end, woody lower
mids and ringing trebles, I knew it would become the sonic standard by which I’d judge every other acoustic guitar.
Put it this way: My brother still has it, and I still want it. I want that bitchin’ cherry-sunburst finish, the
frets that are wide as skateboard wheels, the fully intact pickguard, the dual-trapezoid inlays, and everything
else. Oh, and I’ll take the beat-up Victoria case, with key.
I suffered through a long succession of cheapo guitars, all of them quality-challenged except for the Orlando
classical I'd inherited when my brother bought the Gibson. (The Orlando had some truly outrageous Brazilian
rosewood. Today, something like that would be a thousand dollars.) But it really didn't matter to me how bad the
instruments were, because I'd practice at least two hours every day, beginning immediately after school. The
guitar gave me the power to create chord progressions that reflected the influences of my musical upbringing: the
Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Stones, Dylan, and the theme from “Bonanza.”
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Hendrix, Live at Leeds & The Threshold of a Dream
Interestingly, I wasn’t yet hip to the electric guitar when I first heard Are You Experienced blasting out of the
hi-fi in a neighbor’s garage down the street. I wasn’t really aware that Jimi was doing all that with a Strat,
but sonically it struck me as some of the most powerful and poetic sound I’d ever heard. Over the years I thought
about it—becoming a Hendrix freak in the process—and eventually I realized that the instrument and technique are
tools that serve the music, not the other way around. In some schools of thought it’s called transparency.
Music was going all the time in my family’s house. And that, I suspect, is where this particular upbringing differed
from others. Oh, there was the occasional silence—after all, it wasn’t an insane asylum or a supermarket—but
listening to music was a pretty serious pursuit. As much as we gave our time to it, we gave our imagination
to it. So, listening wasn’t just a matter of hearing, it was a matter of believing . . . and the music had to
be great before we would believe in it. The fundamental distinction is that music wasn’t entertainment in that
house, nor was it something we were “allowed” to have “once we’d reached a certain age.” Admittedly we were
Anglophiles or even Europhiles, but that’s because there was so much orchestral music to be heard. It was a
sensibility that encouraged a real affection for groups like the Moody Blues, as well as later bands like
Hatfield and the North. They had everything: melody, harmonic sophistication, musicianship, great production.
The haunting improvisations of the Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal, and the sonorous melodies of German bassist
Eberhard Weber were a revelation too. Listening to their music teaches you that jazz was never strictly an
American art form; there’s a classical-based contingent that’s every bit as important.
The Sparkling Storefront
Unshakeable faith can make for a lonely devotion, particularly when you follow something as nebulous and mystifying
as music. But as luck would one day have it, a little shop was opening on a commercial street not far away, just
down the street from the liquor store. And on the plain stucco edifice over the storefront a guy was spray-painting
the image of a cherry-sunburst Les Paul. Wow. I was in high school by this time, and I was totally ready for a
place like that. Not that I'd ever held a real Les Paul, but I'd ogled them in the display cases up at the music
store in the mall. But I knew this was going to be different. It had to be, because I could clearly sense it.
Shoot, I could smell those old guitars and musty little amps from out on the street. And there were two or three
guys in the shop, just casually talking and playing. I scooted past the scaffolding and stepped inside.
Man, the sound was awesome. I can still see this quiet little gentleman sitting cross-kneed on a stool, cranking
big, beautiful blues out of a '68 Les Paul Custom and a blackface Fender Deluxe. He'd slur, squawk and bend those
riffs in a way that was so filthy-dirty and lowdown, I knew I just had to get some of that. The sound was huge and
authoritative, but at the same time the man’s approach was perfectly languid. It was one of those moments when you
simply have to assume the music comes to you. You prepare, you perfect your tools, and then you lay back and play
it. Awesome!
Thankfully, the owners of the vintage shop recognized me as one of their own: a happily addicted adolescent guitar
nut who'd do anything to taste that magical concoction of six strings and twenty-odd frets. Maybe they thought I
might even buy one of the seven or so '55 Goldtops that adorned the walls there. Think of that: I was this nice
Catholic kid whose every move betrayed a lack of experience in the world, and I was hangin' out with guys who
owned and sold some of the most righteous guitars ever made! I went there nearly every day, and tried not to be
an ignorant little punk. That was the hard part.
Other people started hanging out at the shop too, and quickly it became a haven for players from throughout the
South Bay. (That’s basically the part of Southern California occupied by Long Beach, which I also learned had an
inordinately high number of monster guitarists.) If you were deemed by the owner to be good enough, and careful
enough, then you could take the guitars off the hangers and play them. The deal with the shop was this: It wasn't
so much the guitar or the amp as an example of collectible history or an indicator of market value. Instead this
was a place in search of the perfect recipe. To that end, everything was considered in excruciatingly precise
detail. Fretboards were cleaned and conditioned (with linseed oil, now considered a possible carcinogen), pickups
and wiring were inspected, and the amps were taken through a comprehensive auditioning process in two key
environments--the carpeted, rough-pine paneled shop, and a crude cinder-block storage room at the back. There were
catalogs of tubes and transformers, and there was a constant procession of speakers. These guys would put just
about anything in a tube amp: Altec, JBL, Gauss, Jensen, Celestion, Eminence, and eventually some cheap no-name
jobs with paper domes and extra-large voice coils. If an amp or guitar had the potential to sound great, the people
at the shop could get it there.
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What to Play . . .
Fender was the amp of choice at the shop. But these were no longer standard-issue Fenders. A local technician who'd
developed a relationship with the shop owners had come up with a way to install a "clipper circuit" in place of
the tremolo control. A friend told me it effectively electrified the front panel, but I hardly cared. Once I got
up the nerve to say, "Mom, I need a blackface Fender Twin Reverb with master volume for my new gig"--and finding
that she’d go for it--I was ready for my new moniker: "The Mayor of Solotown." Sure, I tried the Marshall route
eventually, courtesy of a road-weary hundred-watter that had been stripped of its vinyl, together with a similarly
raped slant cab whose basket-weave grille was decorated with the residue of beer and barf. I just hated the thing.
It sounded so dead – so devoid of ambience. I just couldn’t seem to play the room with it like I could with the
open-back stuff. Another member of the inner circle urged me to keep the Marshall, saying it just needed fresh
tubes. (Actually, he was right.) Well, a little reverb could’ve helped too! So, I took it back to the shop and got
two amps: a silverface Twin circa '70-'71, and an Ampeg VT-22 of roughly the same vintage. Man, that was nuts. I
had way too much power, feedback that was totally controllable per distance and proximity, and the juicy Ampeg
"cone-cry" that Marshall designs, good as they might have been, didn't have. Those two amps worked together almost
intuitively, and they made my little '76 rock-maple Osborne solid-body sing like Pavarotti with his meatballs in a
vice. I still think it was one of the most amazing sounds I've ever heard.
A benefit of being a familiar face was that I could hang around at the shop and play all these incredible guitars,
but honestly the owners didn't expect me to pony up for something truly vintage. I'd just walk in, and within a few
minutes I'd be playing a '57 three-pickup Custom – a guitar that was so good it could almost play itself. I could
pick up a Goldtop with those delicious off-white soapbars and a stoptail, or even the co-owner's customized Olympic
white "studio Strat" with Mighty Mite brass hardware, EMG active pickups and a shimmed Jazzmaster neck, and blow out
the licks till my fingernails bled. Over time I bought this guitar and that, like a scarred-up Guild Aristocrat and
a fabulous mid-'60s Kazuo Yairi replica of a Martin 0018. And of course they knew I'd buy the '63 ES-345 that someone
had stripped bare with a steak knife and spray-lacquered. But no one ever said, "Hey, why don't you buy something."
We of the inner circle even helped sell guitars, because we could make them sound like they should. I'd demo guitars
for buyers all the time, and if I played it they’d probably buy it.
Once, though, I demoed a guitar for a kid just about my age, and I almost wished I hadn’t. I’d been at home practicing
like crazy, and after a while I decided I’d visit the shop. There was this kid there, and he was interested in a
particular Les Paul (a white Custom, I think). The manager said to me, “Hey, play something to show what this guitar
can do.” So, I sat down and . . . and . . . found that I just couldn’t seem to play for beans. It was as if I was
just too tired. Maybe I just felt like a trained monkey. In any case, all the whiplash-inducing improvisational
skill I’d developed was singularly absent from my cells, and I just plain stunk on that guitar.
The kid still wanted the Les Paul. But once he’d left the shop, I told the manager I felt lousy about having played
so poorly. His response was one of the profound surprises of my life up to that point: “So, you’ve been playing too
much,” he said. “Now it’s time to just listen for a while.” It was far more wisdom than I deserved, but that’s the
kind of friend this guy was capable of being. He was honest, and in his business he was equally so. It was another
lesson: Be a listener. Listen to others, listen to your intuition, and listen to the silence that coincides with the
noise. There’s a musical comparison too, I think. So much of what passes for kick-ass product these days is exactly
that, a product that’s out to prove it can kick your ass. Time was, when there was a give-and-take in even the
gnarliest music. There was an ebb and flow, and the tension and release that has characterized so much of the best
music.
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The Immersion Diversion
Clearly I was learning more about playing the guitar than I could have at any music school. It was everything in one
package: musical, philosophical, technical, aesthetic, nostalgic and futuristic. There was a massive influx of ideas
and tastes running from Delta blues and Africana to British progressive rock, on to German and Dutch hard rock, and
tongue-in-cheek quasi-classical stuff from the studios and piazzas of Milan. We believed we should be able to grasp
it all, and that we should be able to play it all. But that was part of the era. Perhaps none of us had a master's
degree in music, but there was a constant and intensive exchange of ideas and information. We’d bring in our favorite
records by King Crimson, Automatic Man, Soft Machine, Caravan, Golden Earring, Be-Bop Deluxe, The Sensational Alex
Harvey Band, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Frank Zappa, and even the maniacally virtuoso French ensemble Magma. We’d listen
to Taj Mahal, Leon Redbone, Tom Waits, Neil Young, and of course Jeff Beck. The power, the greatness and the grittiness
of all that would get mixed together, and there at the confluence of it all we felt that absolutely anything was possible.
The guitars at the shop were generally a cut above, but the one that really had it all was a Flying V dating from about
September 1957. It had a honey-colored Korina body so gorgeous, and a neck profile so perfect, that simply holding it
was enough to make you forsake any other electric instrument. More than any Les Paul, Strat or Tele, it was the guitar.
The tone was monumentally hot—bright, sassy and almost too sensuous for words--and the action over those polished frets
and board edges was like something you dream of. And guess what? We used to play that sucker all the time, usually
through the shop’s number-one Deluxe with that juicy master-volume setup. Man, it was so effing beautiful! But wait,
you’d better steel your nerves for this, because it’ll either make you laugh like an idiot or cry like a baby. Ready?
I’ll continue.
(end of part one, part two will continue in next months newsletter)
Continue to Life in Guitarland: Part 2
Larry Payne is a copywriter, music journalist and lifelong guitarist. He has written for Guitar Player, Guitar for the
Practicing Musician, Virgin Records' Dogma and others, and was the associate editor of Music Connection. He has studied
with the Latin virtuoso Jorge Strunz.
Box 1055, Sheffield MA 01257
(413) 229-0213
writerhead@cs.com
www.writerhead.com
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