Subtle Hint: LE

It happened, I think, during the summer between freshman and sophomore years. It came out of the blue, unexpected, without any real prompting. Sure, there was MTV in the innocence of its infancy, back when they actually played music videos and were not lasciviously trying to subvert the culture. Sure, there was the classic rock battle between WNEW and Q104.3. Still, the desire suddenly appeared where it didn’t previously exist, and it demanded immediate satisfaction.

I had to get an electric guitar.

Oh, I had experience with the guitar, to be sure. Well, distant experience. When I was about nine or ten my mother bought me an acoustic guitar and some lessons. Perhaps a dozen. I didn’t get much farther than “Goodbye Old Paint,” and a passing familiarity with the stylings of Neil Diamond (a songbook bought for me), and I don’t even recall what happened to that acoustic. But five years later, I needed an electric.

I had no money. No job and no income. My parents were recently divorced and we was po’. Living in cramped quarters renting the second floor of a two-story house. But I did have a yellow Honda moped purchased with some cashed-in savings bonds. I wasn’t really into it, and after that little spill where my brains almost spilled out of my head, things just kinda clicked. I sold it, and my mother promptly drove me, all proud and flush with cash, to that world-famous mecca of guitars:

Sears.

No kidding. My first guitar was a crappy sunburst imitation Stratocaster. Never stayed in tune, but no matter. It had a whammy bar. Didn’t know how to tune it, but no matter. That whammy bar was cool. Couldn’t afford an amp, but no matter. All day every day, while my ma worked and I sat in the summer heat in that upstairs apartment watching ZZ Top and Duran Duran, I did dive bombs on that whammy bar.

Memories are vague, here, but I had to return it to the store for some reason. I exchanged it for a Hondo. For those in the know, there’s Les Pauls, there’s Stratocasters and Telecasters, and then there’s Hondos. About six thousand five hundred and forty-three degrees removed from the Les Pauls, Strats and Tellys in terms of quality. But it was cherry red, and, hey, it had a whammy bar. Maybe there was a deal, ’cause now I had an amp. A Crate, about the size and sound of a shoebox, if shoeboxes emitted sonic vibrations. But it started me on the path.

I won’t go into the music I was into at this stage (I think some other post’s covered that old turf), but I primarily focused on Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, and The Who, and to a lesser extent, Pink Floyd, because those are the songbooks I got that Christmas, to learn how to play. That is, after I figured out how to tune the damn thing and how to find notes on the fretboard. Oh, and chords. Especially those demonic barre chords (it took me a good two years before I could master them, particularly the movable “A” shape).

The next couple of summers I’d bike to the nearest mall (a good ten miles away – how the heck did I do that back then?), go to the Sam Goody’s with the wall full of music books, and read them, memorizing notes and chords. For some reason guitar tab wasn’t big back then, so I had to re-learn all that piano music notation, you know, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge and All Cows Eat Grass and all that.

Before I knew it, I was playing such ditties as “Dazed and Confused,” “Pinball Wizard,” “Highway to Hell,” “Wish You Were Here,” and a whole bunch more, mostly snippets here and there. Occasionally I figured something out that I heard on the radio, like “Day Tripper” by the Beatles. I was never much of a soloist (something that just comes naturally to some – think of a prepubescent Angus Young churning out soulful blues solos like “Ride On”), so I just focused on rhythm. My life changed when I saved and bought a Black Sabbath songbook and learned those power fifth chords.

There was an awesome guitar book that I found in my local library. It may actually have been called the Awesome Guitar Book but I think it was something more along the lines of the Ultimate Guitar Book. Anyway, it was the answer to my prayers. It covered everything, the hardware and software, so to speak, of playing the instrument. Best of all was that it was comprehensive and understandable For the first time I knew what the pentatonic scale was, as well as all the others: major, minor, modal. Alternate tunings. Harmonics. Hammer-Ons and Pull-Offs. Vibrato. I stood before this tome enlightened.

I was fascinated by history – particularly the personalities and performers that molded the history of this wonderful instrument. The Ultimate Guitar Book actually began with a dozen or so pages of hagiography of the great ones, compete with action photos: Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Frank Zappa. Through intensive research I pieced together the prehistory of Led Zeppelin, the greatest band in the world, focusing on its pre-bloom manifestation as the Yardbirds in all their guitar hero glory. Remember, this was quite an accomplishment in the days before the Internet. And the days before Guitar Hero.

The stage was set. My senior summer year I pal’d around with a friend who had a friend who had a friend who played guitar. One night, unplanned and unhurried, a beer or two swimming in my veins, I walked a few blocks up the street and stumbled across my friend’s friend and his friend, jamming in a garage. A slight prompting was all it took for me to hop in his car, retrieve my Hondo and Crate, return and jam. My first jam session. The guy playing with me was good: soulful, melodic, and a technique quite unlike anything I ever heard before. I played some twelve-bar blues for him to run over, maybe even the Am-G-F thingie at the end of “Stairway to Heaven.” I was blown away, but had to go away to college in a few days for the next school year.

My friend’s name was Bob, but he had many aliases: Boogie Dog, Tank, the Master of Unreality. His friend’s name was Steve, and Steve’s friend, the guitarist who floored me that day, was Rich.

Rich, a.k.a. Blind Lemon, a.k.a. Sven, a.k.a. Spud, has a much larger role to play in the upcoming saga of Subtle Hint.