Once I decided guitar was it, it became my mission in life to procure one. Of course these things weren't cheap, and as a kid, I had no idea what the difference was between all the different types in the catalogue (and it must be said in those days, KISS were everywhere in guitar catalogues. You'd think they invented guitar catalogues). I spent a long time wondering and never really got any useful information from anybody. So it was off to the library to do research. In the library was exactly one book on guitars, and it had pictures of Andres Segovia in it, an no electric guiatrs. not even a semi-acoustic.That was very unhelpful. I was expecting to find an explanaation of the difference between the silver-spangled guitar used by Ace in KISS, and the really squat looking thing used by John Lennon in old Beatles photos. There wasn't a single book to explain the difference between all these guitars. I mean, what was that battle-axe-shaped THING Gene Simmons was playing and how did it relate to the sound? Who knew? Mr. Segovia and the book he was in wasn't offering any answers.
Getting hold of a budget to purchase a guitar was a bit of a problem too. I had a little bit of savings, but it was a whole order of magintude out from the ballpark of purchasing a guitar. Any guitar. And so I was stumped. All that promise of music faded away from me as I stared at my meagre bank account statement and the price tags in the catalogue. After a few months of sitting around glum and hating KISS ("Those jokers have so many guitars they're selling them in catalogues and I've got none?" - guitars wasn't the only thing that they had more of, but that's another story), listening to the radio and trying not to like anything. It was hard. The hits that year were Blondie's 'Heart of Glass' and Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick In The Wall Part 2'. So there I was with the radio, tuning intently in to this stuff and thnking, "I'm locked out". It was totally pathetic. :)
Eventually, I decided I'd do something constrcutive. I went out and bought a chord book and 'The Beatles Complete Guitar edition'. The thing about 'The Beatles Complete Guitar Edition' was that it had diagrams of chords depicting shapes. It seemed if all I had to do was learn shapes, then I should get a head start. So like a good little swot, I sat down trying to remember the shape of these things: A chord, three dots in a row. D chord, three dots in triangle shape. It was a totally uselss, futile exercise without any sonic feedback. Thus I pulled out the old ukulele and tuned the thing in 4ths and started hearing things - and lo and behold, I hated what I heard. Once again, I realised I needed the real thing.
Then one day I ran into my benefactor uncle T.Y. Every kid should have one of these uncles. These uncles with wallets that seem to stretch to accomodate their nephews' most pressing needs. It's a weird thing to see. I've seen my old man fork out cash to my cousins that he'd never hand over to me or my siblings in a million years. It's part of the 'being-an-uncle' lore, I guess. One of these days I'm going to be up for a lot of cash for my nephew; I'd better start saving. :)
Back to my uncle T.Y. ... Lucky for me, I struck a deal with him whereby if I got a certain mark for the big exam, he'd fork out enough cash for me to buy a reasonable guitar. And sure enough, I did get the marks because, well, I made sure I did. My uncle didn't bat an eyelid, just handed the cash to me in an envelope in the grand tradition of benefactor uncles. Like I said, every kid should have one.
You'd think the easiest thing would be to get to a shop to buy a guitar, wouldn't you? Well, no. There's a classic novel "I Am A Cat" by Soseki Natsume wherein there's a chapter where the character 'Cold Moon' explains his near-mythic journey to procure a violin. It's quite a good read. The point of the story is that he feels buying a violin is somewhat effette and not worthy of a proper man; and yet he wants one, so he decides to go to the music shop, close to sunset. And of course as he relates how the sun takes a long time to set in early autmun. He wastes his time eating dried percimons, sleeping, waiting for the sun to set just so he can venture out and secretly buy a violin. The point being, the day one buys an instrument is really trying. I'm sure even when you sit down to order one over the internet today, it's a little trying.
In my case, I had to spend weeks in transit, moving countries. It took until I got to Australia to finally walk into a music shop and buy a nylon strong made by a company called 'Hoffman'. The guy in the shop was most thorough in making sure I was a satisfied customer; a few summers later, I found myself working there for my summer job. The shop has changed hands since and has moved locations but that was old Dickson's Music in Chatswood.
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My first gtr was a Yamaha nylon which I still got. It has aged well. I leave that in Sydney so I come back to it as new each time I go up. My first electric was a loaner from max. It was a Sakai. It was awful. I played it through a 10 watt practice amp and made grunge. Then I got my Black Tele Custom from linda's Music Mart. This was a shop up some stairs in the stree behind Victoria street on the school side of the line. It was THE coool after school hang. Run by old hippes. They went broke, I reckon. In the meantime they were groovy. They also sold me my black panel 75. So I had a Tele and a Fender amp. That was 1976. I reckoned I was set for life. I was almost right. I have played my Telecaster into the ground. It has been a hardworking axe. It has been refretted twice and a fret grind onnce. It presently needs major surgery ...
Unlike Artneuro, I knew what I wanted early on. This was because people like Max explained it all to me. Like what's a solid body, etc.
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