Guitar : an American life / Tim Brookes.
| Author/creator | Brookes, Tim, 1953- |
| Format | Book |
| Edition | First edition. |
| Publication Info | New York : Grove Press, ©2005. |
| Description | 339 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Subjects |
| Contents | Intro -- Meeting my maker -- The first guitar -- Choosing the wood -- Other colonists: French and English guitars -- The chain-saw phase -- Evanescence -- Gluing and voice the top -- The Hawaiians have landed -- Bending the sides -- The starvation box -- Vertebrae n' roses -- Guitars and guns -- Desperadoes -- Interlude: Dark rectangles -- Radio castles in the air -- Interlude: The worst guitar -- Wrestling the rosette -- The guitar breaks in -- Interlude: Beating canned music -- Hogging off wood -- Bargaining with the devil -- Interlude: Nail angst -- Bearclaw -- The modern age -- Vacuum packed -- Postwar ennui -- Giblets -- Killing for a dime -- Interlude: Brian Bull's guitar -- Love me tender / The worst trip -- Scalloping the braces -- The guitar just grabbed me -- Mummified -- Something is happening -- Inlay -- Satisfaction -- Interlude: reducing Rick to jelly -- Guitar rock takes over -- Interlude: At the Isbin concert -- Applying the finish -- "Vintage" guitars -- Pickups -- Sound check -- Setup -- Once and future -- Gluing the nut. |
| Abstract | When baggage handlers destroy Tim Brookes's guitar, he discovers that a dream guitar is built, not bought, and sets out to find someone to make him the perfect guitar. His quest takes him across the country, talking to historians, curators, and guitar makers, and he explores the guitar's mystique: freedom, the open road, protest and rebellion, the blues, youth, lost love, and sexuality. In an extraordinary variety of hands--miners and society ladies, lumberjacks and presidents' wives, Hawaiians, African-Americans, Cajuns, jazz players, spiritualists, singing cowboys of the silver screen, and Beatles fans--it has become America's instrument. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-329). |
| LCCN | 2004060877 |
| ISBN | 0802117961 |