Instrument Make and Model: Harmony Solidbody Electric Guitar

Color/Finish: Bronze

Arrival Date: 1968

Departure Date: 1972

Price Paid: $5

This was my first guitar. I got it from Mr. Maynard Lydiard, Marc’s father, for five dollars when he and his wife were splitting up. The seventh fret had a dent under the D string, so whenever I tried to play an A, I got Bb instead. This defect forced me to learn all the other places on the instrument where that A appeared, and resulted in my learning the fretboard faster than I otherwise would have.

The guitar (probably a Stratotone, a model that would find favor among blues revivalists thirty-plus years later), was finished in a lovely bronze, with one pickup. As nice as it looked, the finish was already damaged when I acquired it. Normally I would have left it as it was, but 1968 was the era of psychedelia. Creativity, illegible lettering, and unprecedented color combinations were the order of the day. Although I understood psychedelia only in theory, I decided that the prevailing cultural winds gave me license to wave my freak flag as high as possible. (Admittedly, “as high as possible” wasn’t very high, given my strictly supervised and decidedly unfreaky adolescent existence in rural Connecticut.) I had seen pictures of the great Eric Clapton of Cream sporting an SG with a fabulous psychedelic paint job courtesy of Beatle-approved art collective The Fool. I loved Cream, so why shouldn’t I have a psychedelic guitar too?

The path from thought to ill-advised action was short and swift. It was my guitar, my five bucks had paid for it, and my parents weren’t the slightest bit interested in what I did with it as long as it was legal. My father had large quantities of sandpaper in his basement workshop. He had taught me how to sand along with many other basic woodworking skills when I was very young. Dad was also extraordinarily generous about allowing my brother and I to use his tools, except for the table saw, which he insisted he be around to supervise if we wanted to use it.

I also had a number of small glass bottles of model paint, brushes, and thinner left over from my previous interest in model-building. As strict as my parents were about most things, when it came to artistic self-expression they were quite tolerant. I knew I wouldn’t get in trouble for painting a guitar as long as I kept the operation away from rugs and furniture. On the very next Saturday, after I ate breakfast, watched my Beatles cartoons, and mowed the lawn, I set to work.

I removed the bronze finish, which came off easily except for a few stubborn patches that I decided I would integrate into the design. I then painted the bare wood with yellow exterior house paint (the only color my father had lying around that was open) and let it dry, more or less, at least until after dinner. Then I scampered down into the basement again, opened up the model paints, and tried to channel the spirit of the Age of Aquarius.

About twenty minutes in, I realized that painting a guitar wasn’t just self-expression. Success required both a design and technical skill, neither of which I had bothered to develop before starting. It was already clear that the colors used to paint the grey and green fuselages of Army and Navy planes were not the palette of swinging London, something I had overlooked in the planning phase of my project. However, it was too late to turn back, so I dabbled on.

Several hours later I was finished, though I’d had to beg my mother for an extra half hour before bedtime to clean up. The results were hideous. I can see the bronze next to the navy blue on the headstock now. My precious new instrument, the gateway to a new life of hipness and belonging, looked like it had fallen on a Jackson Pollack painting. There was never an uglier guitar in the history of Western music. However, I did learn an important lesson from the experience: wishing for artistic success, even coupled with determined and swift action, isn’t enough to make it happen.

Not only was the guitar homely, and missing an A in the center of the fretboard, it didn’t sound great either. After I acquired a better guitar a bit later, by some miracle I was able to sell it for $15 to one of my classmates during my last year in prep school, so at least I made money on the deal.