I love guitars, and I’ve had a few sitting in my office for years, but it took hip surgery for me to begin playing one of them.
Actually, one of them wasn’t a real guitar, but a wall clock in the shape of one, with an illustration of Elvis, in ’68-comeback black leather, on the body. Another was a junior guitar that I got on eBay, certified to be the one used by the actor playing a ten-year old Elvis in a TV movie about him.
The only playable one was a shiny black Epiphone—an Elvis model. You’re getting the picture: I fell in love with the guitar around the time I—and millions of other kids in the 1950s— became a Presley fanatic.
As a music journalist, at Rolling Stone and elsewhere, I interviewed Jerry Garcia, George Harrison, Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King, Carlos Santana, Jorma Kaukonen, Robert Cray, Stephen Stills, James Taylor, Ann Wilson, John Cipollina, Robby Krieger, Tom Petty, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, and Elvis’ first guy, Scotty Moore. And his second guy, James Burton.
I never met them, but I remember watching the Monterey Pop film and marveling at Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix; the windmill and the fire. I also dug Garcia, Kaukonen, and Michael Bloomfield. And I knew that I’d never learn to play guitar myself. As a kid in the ’50s and ’60s, I was trapped in my parents’ Chinese restaurants, juggling chores and homework, from grade school into college. “Do you play music?” someone would ask. “Yeah, I can play the radio.”
In recent decades, I thought about taking lessons, but never did. Visiting musician friends would pick up the Epiphone, get it in tune, and play it. Nice guitar, they’d say. Other than that, nothing, except one time when a couple of friends had a jam session at my house. One brought his guitar, another lugged in a portable keyboard; I would sing. But, wanting to do more, I fetched my guitar and sat in, trying to strum as lightly as I could, knowing that whatever sounds I made would be wrong ones. I was the not-so-great pretender.
And there was the time I appeared on a syndicated TV show called Your Big Break, featuring amateur singers impersonating music stars. After a tryout at a local club, I was called in to do . . . Bob Dylan. They assigned me “Like a Rolling Stone” and, on the set, gave me an electric guitar. This time, making sounds would be no problem; they’d be drowned out by the backing track and the noise of the rabid studio audience. My concern was the fingering of chords. I had no idea, so my fingers moved randomly up and down the frets, except when I had to concentrate to recall lyrics. Then they just stopped. Neither Dylan nor I won.
Flash forward to a few years ago, and to my hip surgery. I decided that, while recovering, I wouldn’t just watch TV and read, but would finally do something with that Epiphone. I told my plan to Todd Swenson, lead guitarist with a jam band I sing with, Los Train Wreck. Swenson teaches guitar when he’s not playing with the Train Wreck, the Soul Delights, or his own band, This Side Up. He’s taught students of all ages for 30 years. Any time, he said.
As it turned out, my recovery took far less time than expected, and I’d barely dug out my VHS tapes of guitar lessons when I was up and hobbling. But that shiny Epiphone seemed to look at me now and again, from its perch in the corner, saying, in an Elvis snarl, “You had your chance, man.”
I thought back to a saying I’d heard from Bob Neuwirth: If you don’t take a chance, you ain’t got a chance.
So I picked up the Elvis. Actually, the Epiphone felt too big, so I got a parlor guitar. Unwilling to spend a lot on what might well be a folly, I chose a Gretsch Jim Dandy and, in case I ever graduated from acoustic to amplified, an Accent, both purchased from Amazon, the first name in musical instrument stores.
Actually, one of them wasn’t a real guitar, but a wall clock in the shape of one, with an illustration of Elvis, in ’68-comeback black leather, on the body. Another was a junior guitar that I got on eBay, certified to be the one used by the actor playing a ten-year old Elvis in a TV movie about him.
The only playable one was a shiny black Epiphone—an Elvis model. You’re getting the picture: I fell in love with the guitar around the time I—and millions of other kids in the 1950s— became a Presley fanatic.
As a music journalist, at Rolling Stone and elsewhere, I interviewed Jerry Garcia, George Harrison, Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King, Carlos Santana, Jorma Kaukonen, Robert Cray, Stephen Stills, James Taylor, Ann Wilson, John Cipollina, Robby Krieger, Tom Petty, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, and Elvis’ first guy, Scotty Moore. And his second guy, James Burton.
I never met them, but I remember watching the Monterey Pop film and marveling at Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix; the windmill and the fire. I also dug Garcia, Kaukonen, and Michael Bloomfield. And I knew that I’d never learn to play guitar myself. As a kid in the ’50s and ’60s, I was trapped in my parents’ Chinese restaurants, juggling chores and homework, from grade school into college. “Do you play music?” someone would ask. “Yeah, I can play the radio.”In recent decades, I thought about taking lessons, but never did. Visiting musician friends would pick up the Epiphone, get it in tune, and play it. Nice guitar, they’d say. Other than that, nothing, except one time when a couple of friends had a jam session at my house. One brought his guitar, another lugged in a portable keyboard; I would sing. But, wanting to do more, I fetched my guitar and sat in, trying to strum as lightly as I could, knowing that whatever sounds I made would be wrong ones. I was the not-so-great pretender.
And there was the time I appeared on a syndicated TV show called Your Big Break, featuring amateur singers impersonating music stars. After a tryout at a local club, I was called in to do . . . Bob Dylan. They assigned me “Like a Rolling Stone” and, on the set, gave me an electric guitar. This time, making sounds would be no problem; they’d be drowned out by the backing track and the noise of the rabid studio audience. My concern was the fingering of chords. I had no idea, so my fingers moved randomly up and down the frets, except when I had to concentrate to recall lyrics. Then they just stopped. Neither Dylan nor I won.
Flash forward to a few years ago, and to my hip surgery. I decided that, while recovering, I wouldn’t just watch TV and read, but would finally do something with that Epiphone. I told my plan to Todd Swenson, lead guitarist with a jam band I sing with, Los Train Wreck. Swenson teaches guitar when he’s not playing with the Train Wreck, the Soul Delights, or his own band, This Side Up. He’s taught students of all ages for 30 years. Any time, he said.
As it turned out, my recovery took far less time than expected, and I’d barely dug out my VHS tapes of guitar lessons when I was up and hobbling. But that shiny Epiphone seemed to look at me now and again, from its perch in the corner, saying, in an Elvis snarl, “You had your chance, man.”
I thought back to a saying I’d heard from Bob Neuwirth: If you don’t take a chance, you ain’t got a chance.
So I picked up the Elvis. Actually, the Epiphone felt too big, so I got a parlor guitar. Unwilling to spend a lot on what might well be a folly, I chose a Gretsch Jim Dandy and, in case I ever graduated from acoustic to amplified, an Accent, both purchased from Amazon, the first name in musical instrument stores.
by Ben Fong-Torres, Acoustic Guitar | Read more:
Image: KAT
