84 Guitars... and their stories

A few of the collection as of June 2020: L-R across the headstocks: Carmelo Catania, Wandre, Burns, Rickenbacker, Fender, Hofner, Rosetti (Egmond), Hofner, Gretsch, Vox

This is a blog about guitars. Primarily, it is about electric guitars. It is not a history, nor a collector’s guide, although it will find room for both historical and technical information along the way. There are already plenty of excellent reference sources both online and in print from which such information can be obtained. This book deals primarily with a single guitar collection: my own. But in dealing with the instruments that have passed through my hands over the years (and, in most cases, remained in them) I hope it will stike a chord with other players and collectors. Probably the one at the beginning of A Hard Day’s Night.

The guitars and manufacturers that have come in and out of fashion over the past sixty-odd years are signposts in the shifting sands of popular music; and while my own tastes and attempts at music making have often diverged a very long way from the mainstream (I have never, for instance, expended any effort on attempting to play so-called ‘classic rock’), I still think that most guitar fans will recognise some shared experiences along the way. In telling the story of my own relationship with the guitar, both as a player and collector, I hope to provide an oblique look at the history of the guitar in popular music, an outsider’s snapshot of a global cultural phenomenon. There will, inevitably, be gaps, elisions, the inexplicable absence of certain, massively popular, iconic instruments. But in their place, you’ll find the quirky, the inexplicable and the frankly unplayable. There are probably as many histories of the guitar as there are players. This one is mine. I hope you find something in it you recognise, and perhaps even the stimulus to look outside of the mainstream next time you go shopping for an electric guitar.