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Birth of an Angel, and Others
Word had it that our beautiful "V" had been sold to a buyer somewhere down in Texas. But since it was obviously
too special to be shipped, his plan was to drive out to the coast and pick it up. We never saw it leave the shop,
nor could we have handled seeing it go. But a week or so later the shop manager told us the news. He made the report
with an “ouch” of a smile that said all too clearly, “Easy come, easy go.” It turned out that the man who'd
purchased the "V" only made it about halfway home with the guitar. He'd been running hard across the Arizona
desert in his '50s Ford pickup when suddenly he caught a whiff of smoke. Something smelled funny, like maybe
rubber or wiring. Then he saw the flames licking the edges of the hood up front. Soon there was billowing smoke,
fire was everywhere, and just one thing to do: pull over and get the hell out of that truck. He released the door,
kicked it open, headed across the blacktop for the opposite shoulder and Kablooey!!! A gigantic pressure wave
knocked him on his butt, from which position he could see a mushroom of molten iron and oil roiling toward the blue.
It was then that he remembered: The Flying V was in the Ford. He had set it up front with him, leaning it against
the bench seat so that he could admire it as he drove along. But as the truck flamed itself to a crisp on that
Southwestern highway, the soul of one almighty and godlike guitar silently winged its way to Heaven.
Other axes came and went, and we enjoyed them all. There were baby-blue Strats, Mustangs with racing stripes,
Teles and Esquires, a Firebird V that a customer bought and had edge-radiused and refinished wine red, a
particularly fine Les Paul Standard with the top refinished in translucent clover honey (like orange juice),
and a '58 blond dotneck 335 that I sincerely wish I'd put on layaway. And if your pickups weren't up to snuff,
good ol' Bill the shop manager would fix that. He pulled the stock Hi-A units out of my Osborne and replaced them
with DiMarzio PAFs that he'd hotrodded with longer magnets. He also installed some pre-amped EMGs and a five-way
switch in my Ibanez Challenger II "Buddy Holly" Strat replica. Damn, what a great guitar that was. Wait, there's
something in my eye. Just a minute, the tears will pass.
Excuse me. Once in a while I remember letting that one go.
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Fame However Fleeting
Big-time guitarists would come to the shop, too, usually after hours. For example, it was said that Robin Trower
came in one night to audition three '57 Strats that had been brought in for his consideration. And once I was
invited to "drop by" with my guitar when Larry Carlton was scheduled to come in and try a caramel-sunburst ES.
I was there for it, just waiting. Eventually he showed up, and after a few minutes he took a seat adjacent to me,
on one of those funky squash-colored naugahyde ottomans that every guitar shop ought to have. He just started doing
his thing, so I immediately jumped in with mine. It sounded good to me, and I could tell he was diggin’ it, so we
played that way for at least half an hour. Eventually I packed up my guitar, but I loitered long enough to listen
in as Carlton finished his business with the management of the shop. (He said he liked the ES but that the neck
would need some work, which I took to mean reshaping.) Then, when I got home, Bill called from the shop and said,
"So, after you left, Carlton goes, 'Jeez, who was that kid!? He's great!'" It was nothing, really. When you’ve
been living and breathing Wishbone Ash for months, and practicing every waking hour, you aren’t going to feel
intimidated by a few Steely Dan riffs.
Life goes on, and eventually I was too busy to visit the vintage shop very often. There was a change in management
anyway, so the vibe was noticeably absent. In time I became a full-time writer, covering my favorite subject as an
editor and contributor with various magazines. But in all the years since those days, when music focused our minds
and fueled our fingers, I have yet to hear more than a handful of guitarists who can touch some of the players I
knew from that little vintage guitar shop in Long Beach. I’ve lived in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and
Tokyo, and I've met, interviewed and studied with brilliant players. Latin, world music, rock, metal, the studio
scene, fusion, and etcetera: all have their names and signatures. But when you find a place where you can immerse
yourself in the art of the guitar—where you’re totally free of inhibitions and ready to learn from players of
every genre—then there’s no question about it. That’s where you’ll find musicians who are quicker, faster, more fluid,
funnier, more powerful, more dedicated, better equipped to improvise and easily equipped to out-rock any of the
supposed masters from this or any crop in recent memory. Simply put, it’s the place.
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The Philosophy Part
What did I learn, and what sort of philosophy emerged from my experiences there? Well, to review them and sum up
I’d say it’s as important to attempt as to succeed; that the process is nothing without the quest for the process;
that it’s all for nothing but never simply for entertainment; that it’s always worthwhile to want to be the best,
even though there is never one “best”; that one should listen to the lessons of accident and random occurrence;
that the person that makes the music, though the music fulfills the person; and that if you don’t play as if it
were your very last time on this little blue planet, then you’re just wasting your time.
I also learned that you can play almost any kind of guitar you want and sound as good as you want. For instance,
I don’t think any of the best players from this particular circle had the money it took to own one of the best
guitars in the shop. In fact, I know they didn’t. Those guitars are intentionally priced to remain beyond the
reach of the player, so that they’ll neither suffer from player wear nor embarrass the collector who can afford
them but can’t actually play. But if you think we ever discussed it or worried about it, you’d be wrong. As I
said earlier, we could play the vintage gear nearly anytime we wanted, and it was great. But then we’d head for
our own guitars. I had my Osborne, which, if you can imagine, looks like a Rickenbacker 325 with a Mosrite headstock
and Gibson-style hardware. Jeff had his lucite Dan Armstrong. Ronnie had a Strat with a fat little Tele neck on it,
and Martin had an early issue of the Ibanez Artist in that nice violin finish. With the exception of my Osborne,
nearly everything we owned was pre-owned, and certainly everything we played needed some serious tweaking due to overuse.
It’s still a challenge to defend an older guitar against a newer, better-built one. And since I nearly played the
Osborne to death—to the point that I’d often fall asleep with it on my chest—I’ve placed it in the deep freeze until
I can resurrect it. Instead, I play any of several guitars. For example, I had a superstrat built at ESP Craft House
Tokyo in ’85. I hand-picked all the components myself, right down to the slab of northern ash, birds-eye neck and
Bill Lawrence pickups. I even had the luthier assemble a Kahler Pro trem with a combination of brass and stainless
parts. It has an oiled neck with a lacquered fingerboard, and the body is translucent cranberry. (Don’t ask how I
put a belt-buckle dent in the top of the guitar.) Then I have a Yamaha SBG1300TS double-cutaway in gothic black.
It weighs more than a Toyota and has a baseball-bat neck, but what resonance! There’s also an early ‘60s Eko model
200 “Mascot” archtop in showroom shape, aged to a delicate apricot blond. It’s small, but like many Eko acoustics
it’s loud and very responsive, with tremendous sustain. And I have a four-pickup Eko Cobra that, despite the uprooted
frets and shrunken pickguard, still manages to produce a sound that Stevie would’ve swapped his axe for. My current
favorite, though, is a beautiful Eastwood Sidejack Deluxe in caramel sunburst. The fretboard is so slick and fast, I
just can’t stay away from it. If I were to characterize its sound, I’d say it conjures the tonal balance of a
Firebird, or maybe a super-hot Tele. There’s a “long scale” quality about the sound, which I really like.
See? There’s nothing outlandishly expensive. Sure, the Osborne is rare, with a serial number of “0003.” The ESP is
tailor-made, and the Eko 200 is a sweetheart Django machine – a total rocket. But I treat each of them as a tool to
help reach an artistic goal. It doesn’t take a fabulously expensive guitar to succeed in this respect. Instead you’ll
want a guitar that doesn’t hold you back. You can play a guitar that challenges you, but a challenge is distinct from
a hindrance. If the pickups are too hot or tend to feed back, you can pull back from “11.” When the intonation is off
in the octave register, you can adjust it or deal with it. When there’s a tendency to play one guitar a bit more
staccato than you’d like, you can simply relax and play more legato. You can even pick harder, or play fingerstyle,
and achieve a similar result. Just make the instrument your own. Teach that guitar how to play and how to sound its
best. Then it can teach you in return.
So, if you're out there, Martin, Ronnie, Rob, Mark, Bill, and especially my old friend Jeffrey, I want to thank you
for making me a part of the group. You've taught me more than I could ever say, and you'll always be among my true
guitar heroes.
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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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