I was sat in Tombstone, doom scrolling, as there’s not much else to do in this fucked up mental post-Covid war torn over heating world, presided over by a fat orange twat and his loopy mates, or indeed in my shop. I’ll save all that for another cheery episode. I scrolled across an article about some newly released Collector’s Edition Greeny 1959 Les Paul replica, with all the mismatched knobs, switches and scratches, for about £50 000 or more, however that does include an actual Certificate of Authenticity. Thankfully only a short, limited run of guitars. What bollocks. Pay your money and get presented with the replica guitar by Kirk Hammett, whoever the fuck he is. All inclusive, flown over by Gibson to Nashville, to meet Kirk, with some massive wasteful carbon footprint involved. But I guess the fuckwits that buy such guitars don’t give a flying fuck about the planet or the CO2 they may personally exude, not a care in the world, while we still have a world to care about. That was a lot of fucks in the first paragraph, but we haven’t done this for a while.
Anyway Kirk Hammett, I thought he was something to do with handbags, but turns out that’s actually Katherine Hamnet. Kirk’s some big hitter in Metallica apparently, they’re not my bag either. I’m not a metal fan, particularly as I was thrown out of a pub once, just to make room for Iron Maiden. Bastards.
Then the phone rings, half frightens me to death until I remember what it is. Raising a cloud of dust, I answer and speak to some dipstick who wants his lesser Les Paul relicing to an exact Peter Green replica. That is to look like Greeny the guitar of course, and not be carved in to a mini Peter Green idol. That would be difficult and just plain weird. What a coincidence! I get this a lot, not the Greeny genre necessarily, people wanting to relic all sorts of stuff, guitars, girlfriends, mostly with poly’ finishes – that’s a non-starter but we’ll
discuss that in a later edition. I went out with a girl with a poly’ finish once. Shiny all over. I was tempted to suggest he spent his £1500 on guitar lessons and/or a personality transplant, but stalled at the last minute. He’d already got the Peter Green T shirt and a lock of his hair. At least this was potentially better work than the usual fayre –
“Can you put an E string on my guitar…” “What sort of guitar?” “A red one….”
Happens all the time.
“Do you sell guitar cases?” “What’s it for?”
“A guitar, a brown one…” “Is it an acoustic?” “I don’t know…”
“Do you re-string harps?” ……. Guess what……
Or some arsehole wanting to buy just one loop ended mandolin string, saxophone reed, mechanical metronome or a 3.5 mm to 6 mm jack converter, which I’m fresh out of right now. Fresh out of all of them in fact, all that stuff, forever and always will be. Plectrums for a quid?
“Can I pay by card?”
“No fuck off”.
If they could actually buy a plectrum, it would turn out to be the wrong brand, colour and/or thickness. Just about thick enough to poke an eye out though. Despite the temptation I sent the whole lot to auction.
“Do you sell pianos for mice ?”
This is all absolutely true, genuine telephone conversations. Apart from the mouse bit. You may be surprised to learn I made that up. I despair. Some of it is partly due to the omnipresent Google. Google will not allow you to categorise your business, beyond very limited preset options, or make a statement such as “by appointment only, no regular hours”.
This, coupled with the fact that no fucker reads anything at all, ever. Spend £1000’s on a website for no bastard to read the copy you agonised over for many hours, telling the world what you actually do and sell. Instead, they just press the “call” button and waste a few more seconds of this sad sucker’s life with all their string and battery woes.
I’ve had several phone calls from Google recently. Some very friendly Geordie bloke, which I quickly worked out was a chatbot, as it refused to respond to my comment that I do not have regular hours, and just kept constantly rephrasing its own question “You have no opening hours listed, what are your opening hours?” “When do you open?” “What hours and days do you open?” I know for a fact that real Geordies are not like that. Makes you wonder about Google psychology. Bet they employ thousands of nerds, all trying to get in to your head. A day in mine would finish most of the fuckers right off.
Maybe Google have profiled me. I’m from the North East, thought a bit of fellow banter would bring me round. Take more than that to catch me out. Fuckers.
And don’t get me started on email enquiries. I regularly receive detailed email’s requesting repair advice. From the tone there is clearly never going to be any business generated. I do however, in a fully professional manner, of which I am capable and schooled, take considerable time to always reply, every time, in detail. Do I get an acknowledgement or thanks? Do I fuck.
There’s no escape, just had a bloke wander in off the street, my address scrawled on a piece of paper. Must get that lock sorted. Looked like he’d not been out the house since 1959. Proper Boo Radley. He was most pissed off when he discovered, no, I did not stock a replacement plastic bridge for his 1964 Woolworths John Hornby Skewes Piece of Junk Acoustic Guitar. Made me wish I did, the price would probably have killed him.
And lastly, Boo aside, if you make it across the threshold, I just hate the bastards who say “it’s only a little job, I’d do it myself, but I just don’t have time….” I’m going to invest in one of those trapdoors, like Mr Burns in The Simpsons. What a bloke. Top man.
I’m big on customer relations, here in Tumbleweed Connection, it’s my speciality. Even the demise of the fabulous all singing all dancing PMT mega-store just around the corner has brought no additional footfall or business, except Mr Bastard-Loop-ended-Mandolin-String. Or the closure of all Nottingham’s other guitar and music shops over the last few years, made absolutely no difference. I’m the sole city centre survivor in the great guitar retail dystopia. A never ending loop of fuckwits, who can’t even change a battery, or know that their guitar contains a battery or know what instrument they actually play. Here for the long haul. Please drop in for some abuse, on the odd occasion when I deign to unlock the door, if you want to try a fabulous handmade NCG Guitar. Better still email for an
appointment and you’ll be met with coffee, smiles and scintillating conversation. Punt over, back on track now. No more plectrums for sale.
So, all this got me thinking about ’59 Les Pauls and Peter Green’s legendary guitar in particular. Read on:
I have this regular customer, let’s call him George for now. We were gassing one day in the shop, in happier days, in a happier, slightly safer world, talking the usual bollocks, when Greeny is mentioned. George tells me he’s actually played the guitar, whips out his phone and shows me video clips of him noodling away on it. Good player is George. Turns out he lived next door to this geezer called Stan, who was the “keeper” of Greeny, and another famous, not to be named axe. I’ve no idea why Stan kept them, or for whom, but George certainly played Greeny, more than once. Lived in a vault in Stan’s basement. Not George, the guitars. George lived next door.
A while later I’m at a show and happen to meet Stan. I know who he is but he doesn’t know me. Although we had previously spoken on the phone at length over a different guitar, so I knew a bit about him. I did not enlighten him to this fact. Keep a low profile, best way I always find.
Stan had three Les Pauls at the show. A regular Custom Shop reliced ’59. A ’59 converted from a Fifties donor guitar, with all the correct original period hardware bits and pieces and a real deal 1959 Les Paul, probably worth £250k +. I can’t tell the difference between any of them and being a vintage guitar dealer, casually pick, what turns out to be the wrong one, as the genuine article. Stan is a consummate player and performs regularly. He says they all play, feel and sound exactly the same. I take his word for it.
Now Stan gets to talking and tells me he was the keeper of Greeny. This I already know to be true, courtesy of George, but I keep schtum. He goes on to tell me that he sent the guitar off to be copied by a master luthier in East Anglia, but wouldn’t tell me who. This work apparently took six months or more. An exact copy, in every detail. Side by side on the work bench day after day. I think no more of it and go buy a hot dog. ’59 Les Pauls don’t do it for me.
A while later I’m on my travels and slide in to see my mate Shoebox, who works with more guitars than you can ever imagine. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of guitars. Shoebox tells me he knows this cove who’s a journalist. The bloke regularly drops by his shop for tea. Helps validate rare stock. Some big expert-textpert in guitar world. Writes books, publishes articles and knows more about said stuff than even Shoebox does and that’s saying something. And a shedload way more than me, but that’s no big deal. I won’t mention his name.
So, the Journo’ tells Shoebox he’d interviewed Gary Moore once, before he died. I suppose he didn’t really need to add that final bit, as it was absolutely final. (For those that don’t know – I can’t believe you’ve made it this far. Greeny was owned by the legendary Peter Green and then sold, or virtually given away, to Gary Moore, also a legend to some). As a side note I can never look at the word “legend” without reading “leg end”, that was in a Carry On film, it’s scarred me.
All this was not long after our man had published some massive coffee table tome, Guitars of the Stars, or some such bollocks, which included the Greeny Les Paul. Awful name. Big glossy photo’s, comes with its own legs, if you don’t happen to have a coffee table handy. I just made up the book title, but there probably is such a named publication to put your coffee on. If so, it’s definitely not the book I’m on about, that’s clearly just a coincidence.
Now old Gary, liking the craic, tells our Journo’ man that, as he recalls, Greeny had its original pickups removed during Gary’s custody, as Gary didn’t like them one bit. As far as Gary remembered, the pickups were never refitted or included when Gary sold the guitar, interesting….. Poor old Gary was skint and the guitar had to be flogged off. It was sold to a dealer and then went through further various dealer’s hands and ended up finally being bought by Hammett.
So, our man the Journo’ is flicking through his new book on the coffee table, waffling on and showing Gary the wonderful high res’ photos of his old flame. To which Gary instantly responds “That’s definitely not my guitar in the photo’s, that’s not the one I bought off Peter, I’d know my guitar anywhere….”
The plot thickens.
So, the question is, did the master luthier, return the original Greeny or the replica guitar to Stan? Or indeed make two replicas and keep the original, hoodwinking Stan, who’d already said he couldn’t tell the difference, because they were all very good ……. So, what exactly has Handbag bought?
It subsequently occurred to me that maybe I was the only one who knew all the pieces of this sordid little yarn – which is all true, in as much as what was said to me. Right up until this point, where you’ve just read all about it. So now we all know the tale. Seems unlikely though, after all it’s rock & roll and nobody can keep quiet, especially if there’s a shilling in it, or other tongue loosening stuff, what’s your poison? I guess nobody involved will ever want to know the truth or dig, there’s just too much money and credibility at stake. Never mind the dosh Katherine may have lost. Think of all the spin-offs, licence agreements, copies and merch’.
Or maybe Gary was off his tits and Stan was making it all up, to impress me, a bloke he didn’t know and would likely never see again. Shoebox certainly had no axe to grind, the journalist also. I know what I’d like to believe.
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