A guitar is more than wood and strings
MSo what do you do when you get the email from a major film production: “We regret to inform you that the priceless guitar you loaned us for our film was destroyed accidentally by our lead actor.”
This happened. Quentin Tarantino’s huge 70 MM blockbuster, “The Hateful Eight,” has a scene where the female protagonist, Daisy Domergue (played with relish by Jennifer Jason Leigh) plays a soft ballad on what I immediately recognized as an antique Martin guitar.
Bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) was having none of it, and he violently smashed the guitar to smithereens. In the theatre there were audible gasps from what I am sure were guitar players.
I believe we all thought, “Surely Tarantino’s crew had dummy vintage guitars made up for that scene!”
They did. However, they forgot to tell Kurt Russell, who grabbed the REAL vintage Martin and smashed it to pieces.
Dick Boak, the Martin Guitar director of artists relations, is a friend of mine. He was one of the first on board with my children’s book (illustrated to perfection by Rome’s Brian Barr) “Martin the Guitar.” Indeed, Mr. Boak was my host at the legendary Martin factory in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, and I was invited to play any of the famous guitars in the Martin Museum. I did, and had one of the most memorable musical mornings of my life.
Mr. Boak was, needless to say, a bit unhappy about the destruction of the famous guitar on that movie set. The instrument was insured, and moreover, this is more than wood and strings, but a relic of one of America’s most storied companies. Irreplacable. In the early 1980s I taught at Truett-McConnell College over in the north Georgia mountains. After my voice/choral day, I taught a few guitar lessons to local string pickers, and I enjoyed it very much. I owned a very interesting guitar with a story.
The guitar was a Harmony Sovereign. This was a big dreadnought- style acoustic with a wonderful rich tone. A couple came through Thomson, Georgia, one day and traded the guitar and a diamond ring to the president of The Bank of Thomson, Boone Knox. My late mother, Dorothy, was in the bookkeeping department. The guitar sat forever in the vault, and Mr. Boone would loan it to me during my high school years, and eventually I bought it from the bank for a paltry sum.
I had my Harmony Sovereign on a guitar stand in my studio at Truett-McConnell College. I also had a mouse in that room.
One afternoon late, I was down on the floor carefully setting some cheese in a mousetrap and it accidentally went off. I recoiled in shock. My elbow went back and struck my guitar so hard it knocked it off its stand. I quickly replaced the guitar and the cheese.
The next afternoon I strummed a chord on the guitar, and it was horribly out of tune. I reached up to adjust the tuner and when I touched it the neck moved back most unnaturally. There was a crack running up and down the entire instrument. Devastation. Despair. Nausea. I took the instrument home that night, held a wake, and the next day tossed it into an industrial waste bin.
I think my family was more upset than me. I had a most benevolent uncle and he was distraught over my loss. He provided seed money, and soon I went to Atlanta and purchased a low-end Martin, then called The Martin Shenandoah. I played it for years, saved money, and eventually purchased the guitar sitting behind me here in my New Mexico studio, a lovely Martin D28.
I haven’t reached out to my friend Dick Boak about his loss, one far more historical than mine. I do know that the Martin company has issued a statement that there will never be another historical Martin loaned to a motion picture company.
I know that Mr. Boak loves those instruments in the museum he shepherds. Guitars from the hands of Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Gene Autry, and even Sting adorn the walls there, and Boak knows the personal story of each.
I do know a little of the emotions he must be feeling about now, as I did back in a tiny college in the foothills of north Georgia.
Andres Segovia said, “Lean your body forward slightly to support the guitar against your chest, for the poetry of the music should resound in your heart.”
That’s why we guitar folks feel the way we do: our instrument resonates right next to our heart, and when we play well, it comes from the heart.
Take care of your instruments, folks, and watch out for film productions if you can.
HARRY MUSSELWHITE
Jim Powell of Young Harris