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How I Smashed My Guitar
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| On February 4th, 2000, I appeared in concert at the NAMM show in Los Angeles representing Martin Guitars. It is an honor for me to be associated with Martin as I believe they make the greatest guitars on earth. I pretty much brutalize my instrument, and I doubt very much that there are many builders out there who would want me to slam their guitars around the way I am known to do... (I have heard a story about another artist who actually beats the guitar with a hammer, and although I am not THAT bad, I am in fact very, very tough- I once played someone's new guitar on stage and afterwards, with shaking hands and beads of sweat dripping off his forehead, he inspected the guitar for damage). Well, it happens that I was sitting backstage just a few minutes before show time, and as I looked down I had a strange hallucination- I thought I saw a six inch gash from the widest part of the guitar all the way to the jack at the bottom. As I focused, I realized that I could see straight through this gaping hole into the interior of the guitar. I also realized that something had to be done immediately as I had about four minutes left. Someone ran into the audience to get Dick Boak of Martin Guitars. Acoustic builder and old friend Michael Gurian was there as well as many other experts, and after hastily considering the options (after declining Roy Rogers' kind offer to borrow his beautiful Martin guitar- you can see how I felt responsible at that moment not to), Dick came up with a bold plan. Snapping his fingers in the air, I heard him say, "Bring me some duct tape!" A roll of woodgrain duct tape appeared from nowhere and Dick firmly and expertly taped the break together, though by that time it had spread around the entire back- the pressure from the strings pulling the neck was literally separating the sides. With everything held together with tape, I wondered aloud if I should skip my set. Dick said he wanted me to do the show regardless. When I asked if I should go easy on the instrument, he again boldly said "No, do your normal show." We would just wing it and if it turned ugly we could make other arrangements. Roy's guitar was still an option (what a gentleman), so, after Dick went up on stage to introduce me, I almost managed to do my normal show. In the first two songs the guitar shifted with a series of pinging sounds as the strings slipped into various tunings, but after that it stood the test and actually sounded excellent until the end. As I took my bow I spontaneously kissed the guitar and someone recorded it all on film. This is how passionate I feel about my instrument. The next day Martin took the guitar (we all figured I musta' slammed it against a cement floor somewhere along the road), and gave me a brand new shining cousin straight off the wall from the Martin booth at NAMM. The new guitar has proven to be yet more fabulous than the other dear old friend, which has since met it's death. After being shipped home it was laid out on the diagnostic table at the Martin factory and it was determined that it would eventually be consigned to the Martin Museum along with a short story about the night I split open my guitar. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||