Guitars

I was recently rooting through my study looking for a book when I must have jostled something and my ovation fell in an El-Kabong fashion, right on my head. I then sat on the floor and cradled this guitar, while it returned some memories to me.

When I was young and immortal I damaged my hearing with electric music. I decided to go with acoustic guitars. I first purchased a Yamaha Twelve-String, but soon realized that I was spending half of my time tuning it and the other half of my time playing out of tune.

From there I purchased a big box maple Guild. (Robert in the Brownsmead Flats has one almost like it.) This instrument had sound. You could strum it, set it down, go out for dinner and drinks and those strings were still humming when you returned later that evening. Unfortunately that instrument was previously owned by someone who had the strings on too tight and I tried everything I could do to straighten the neck out, but never could. That was when I bought the Ovation and have had it now for well over 30 years. Oddly I don’t think I’ve played more than a hand full of times since I moved out here nearly 20 years ago.

Growing up in the suburbs of New York City, one’s whole identity was formed by the guitar you had. I was a Gibson kid. I was probably 12 years old when I first tried a 1963 Gibson Firebird. I was probably fourteen years old when I got my first SG Special. It was the perfect guitar for me. Not fragile like an ES-335 or a Johnny Smith, and not a heavy thick model like the Les Paul. I just liked the look and the feel.

Another memory came back to me as I sat there on the floor. It was of the time when I did all my writing at a café that had entertainment on the weekend. The owner of the café saw some microphone stands for sale in the paper, and asked if I would be good enough to pick them up. I was familiar with the area and I had a jeep that could hold all sorts of stuff, so off I went. I had a suspicion who I’d be buying the mike stands from. Sure enough, as I pulled into the quasi private community, up his driveway, he met me at the back door. It was The Gibson King himself; Les Paul.

Les took me into his studio to get the mike stands. I got four of them. He helped me load them into the Jeep. We chatted for a while, and I had to ask him if he had any guitars for sale. He said, “Follow me.”

We went back into his home and I followed him into a large room that had probably twenty guitars, each on a stand arranged in a semicircle. There were several Les Paul models there and even some experimental Gibson models I had never seen before or since.

I zoned in on a brown EBO bass. I hadn’t had a bass guitar since I sold my scroll neck Baldwin some years earlier, and the EBO was the bass version of the SG special. I wanted it.

Les plugged both our guitars in. He started playing something like Walking Whistling Blues. I listened for a moment in awe that I was in a room alone with Les Paul watching him play. He said, “Are you planning on trying that bass out today?” Holy shit! I was getting a cue to play bass guitar along with Les Paul. I did my best, which wasn’t very good, but playing guitar with Les Paul will always be a memorable in my life.

As it turned out Les was asking three times the amount a new EBO would have cost me at the most expensive music shop in town. I passed on buying the bass, but the totally free experience of playing with Les Paul was priceless to me.