synchronicity | A Year of Songs

I Can See Myself in My Guitar This is the headstock of my first guitar. Sharp-eyed comics fans will note the faded image of the Silver Surfer, which was sliced off the cover of Silver Surfer issue # 2 with an X-acto knife. This, I believe makes it the most expensive (if not valuable) guitar of its class, ever. Well… how was I to know? It was 1971 and it felt like the whole world was tipping on the edge of the apocalypse. The last thing on my mind was the future value of a comic no one else I knew had ever heard of…

But, actually, it was my third guitar (below) that was the first one I really fell in love with… a love affair that has mellowed with time but is no less deep to this day.

I Can See Myself in My Guitar That battered old Yamaha came to me at a time when I was really down. My little house had been burglarized and my big, shiny dreadnaught steel string had got sucked out into the night with 300 of my most recently played LPs, my turntable, my tape deck, a bunch of my tapes… a bummer.

I moped around for a couple weeks without a guitar, being a broke student with a couple of part time jobs. Finally one of my friends mentioned his brother in law had an old guitar he wanted to sell. I was a little let down when I heard it was a nylon string classical — the Silver Surfer guitar was a nylon guitar and it was virtually unplayable, and had a flat, lifeless sound I could never make work for anything but scratchy rhythm.

But I came over and met his brother in law, a young hippy guy. He pulled out this Yamaha G-130A classical, a little dinged, the plastic (!) varnish worn away a bit on the butt, in a cardboard case. But it had a sweet, warm tone, completely unlike the ‘Surfer. I asked him how much he wanted for it.

Thirty-five or forty, he said. I offered him $37.50, which gave him a chuckle and we shook hands.

I’ve loved that guitar ever since.