My Guitars
&
Guitar Zen

I have always had a passion for the guitar and always endeavour to play as many different ones as I can on my recordings.  I suppose I have an obsession with the guitar which has dominated my musical life ever since I first heard it played as a small boy, on the radio in the 1950s, whilst listening to the burgeoning sounds of rock’n’roll and blues from the U.S.A. via the American Forces Network and then later, on Saturday Club and Uncle Mac’s Children’s Favourites on a Saturday morning.

ES330                  Lowden O25              Gretsch             Artisan

What a paucity and dearth of musical excitement we youngsters were subjected to in the decade following the end of World War Two!  There was a lot of swing and big band music interspersed with the odd gem from Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, or some old blues guy like Jimmie Rodgers and, at these moments, I would sit up and start to take serious notice as the thrill spread through my body and my senses began to shake and feet began to tap.  All I ever wanted then was to own and be able to play a guitar; my cousin had a beautiful red one, but I ended by beginning my musical career as a drummer in an R’n’B band at school.  It wasn’t until 1965 that I actually bought my first guitar – a cheap plywood steel-string acoustic – for £3 at the local music shop in town and, from then on, there was no turning back for me! 

D28                        ES175                  J40                      Tele

SG                         Classic               Mandolin          Ukulele

Guitar Zen.
Playing the guitar is a very spiritual activity for me, where I can transcend the mere physicality of pressing the strings onto the frets and strumming and picking, to a fusion between myself and the instrument where we strive to become as one and work together in complete synergy.  It becomes a very Zen-like experience – what I call Guitar Zen – where the playing becomes more instinctive and intuitive, without the pre-requisite of thought processes to encumber the smoothness of that supreme moment of creativity.  Things that you had struggled with to get right and had seemingly made little or no headway with up to that point, will suddenly slot into place, almost effortlessly by comparison with the battle you had been waging.  You definitely know when you have hit that Zen moment!   

Ukulele - detail

SG – detail     Lowden – detail             Mandolin - detail

When I had taken home my first guitar, I was very excited and I sat down with my book of basics of 500 beginners’ chords and how to tune it.  I had no note from which to start though as E meant little to me then, but I chose a pitch and started to tune up, only to snap the top string when I got to it, as the pitch was obviously too high.  What to do next!  I decided to get the bus back to the shop in the High Street taking my guitar with me.  The chap who had sold it to me was quite sympathetic and gave me a new top E string, which he showed me how to attach, and he showed me how to tune it up, which he did for me, to pitch, and back home I could now start on the seemingly impossible task of deciphering the chord diagrams to learn them.  Some were straightforward enough as I had enough fingers to be able to cover the strings, but some looked to be a physical impossibility, as they seemed to require more fingers than I had on my left hand!  This was going to be harder than I had previously imagined so, some time studying the diagrams, and working out some logical progression through the chordal structures was going to be necessary.  But I persevered and, through a mixture of logic, physical impossibility, and luck, I managed to play all of the beginner chords in the book.  The next part, learning them so I could remember them without looking at the diagrams, was a more difficult task, and then once learned, I would have to work on my speed of changing.  Without that, the songs that I tried to play from the songbook I had also purchased, would sound nothing like they were supposed to, which proved to be very frustrating!  As if that wasn’t bad enough, there was also the pain barrier to go through, but no one had told me about that!  It took me ages to build up the calluses on the finger tips of my left hand, so I could play effectively and without pain, but the pain had to be endured in order to get to that point.  I stuck at it, every day for weeks on end, being thwarted at every twist and turn until I felt that I was losing the battle with this very ordinary piece of wood and metal!  Then one day it all suddenly seemed to change.  I picked up the guitar and there was no pain; I could remember and play the chords without referring to the book, and my changes had become quick enough for the songs I was trying to play, to sound recognisable at last.  I had arrived and there was to be no stopping my progress from that moment on!

Fender Tele   Martin J40         Lowden               Les Paul Classic

Gretsch              ES330                 ES175               Les Paul Artisan

Martin D28                  SG Standard      ES330            ES175

I’ve had numerous guitars through my hands since 1965, but I was never in a position to build up a collection in the early years, so I would buy and sell each guitar in order to try and move onto something better.  Some I regretted selling and wished I’d kept, and others I was glad to see the backs of to be honest!  Once I’d got the rudiments over with my first guitar, I realised that I could actually buy one with a better action which would help my playing and me to improve at a much faster rate.  I was at university by this time, and I sold my £3 guitar to my room-mate for £3 and bought a beautiful hand-made, nylon-strung Yairi (I didn’t keep this one, sadly – a regret of mine!), plus my Rosetti mandolin (which I did keep I’m very happy to say!). 

In 1968, I swapped the Yairi for a B&M steel-strung dreadnought, because I thought that I wanted to be Bob Dylan!  I hitch-hiked around Europe in that summer and, whilst sleeping on a beach in Spain for a month or more, a girl I got friendly with bought me a Spanish guitar as a gift, because I was missing my guitar back at home so much!  Hitching back home, I stopped at a friend’s flat in Kent, and swapped my Spanish guitar for another of a similar kind with my friend’s sister, and set off back to my parents’ home.  In the early 70s, I sold the B&M to buy a Yamaha acoustic, but by 1976, I had sold my Yamaha, and bought a beautiful Epiphone El Dorado dreadnought guitar – I was getting much more serious by now and was gigging regularly in the North East of England so needed something of better quality, which would stand up to the rigours of a gigging schedule.  I also bought my first solid electric guitar, a Vox Clubman, which I also still possess, more as an historic quirk rather than as a guitar to play.

SG Standard – tailpiece & tremolo detail.

 
 Les Paul Classic               SG Standard

Les Paul Classic – flame top         ES175 - detail

Les Paul Artisan – 3 pickups & inlay detail

In 1981 I bought my first, what you might call, ‘serious’ guitar.  A mate was emigrating to Canada and reluctantly sold me his 1972 Fender Telecaster which I still have.  He had changed the scratch plate to black because he was an Albert Lee fan, and I have recently restored it to the original white, which it would have had in 1972.  It is a beautiful guitar to look at, and a great one to play.  Another friend of mine also had a guitar to sell, a Levin, and I fell in love with it immediately and bought it.  It was a beautiful guitar with a great tone.

Levin                Epiphone      Vox      Hohner

My next big change happened in 1993 when I decided to part-exchange my Epiphone and Levin guitars at the local music shop for a new Gibson SG Standard, my first of many Gibsons.  That deal left me without an acoustic guitar, and not too much money to spend on a replacement, but I managed to buy a Hohner acoustic until I was able to get something better later on.  And I got something better later that year when I bought my first Martin acoustic – my 1971 D28, from a dealer.  From then on I added to my collection – two Gibson Les Pauls, a Gibson ES330TD, a Gibson ES175D, another Gibson SG Standard, a Lowden O25, a Gretsch Hawaiian from their Historic Series, and a Martin J40. 

Gibsons:Les Paul/SG        Epiphone.            Spanish/Levin/Spanish

Add to those a ukulele and a surprisingly good Vintage acoustic bass guitar, and my collection was complete – for the foreseeable future at least!  There are many guitars I would still love to have to add to my collection, but I am happy with what I have now, and cannot see me selling or part-exchanging any of them at this moment in time.  I love them all, and play them all as often as I can, and use them all when recording in my GypsyKate Studios (see the page).  To hear examples of me playing them, just go to the Discography Page and hear the material I have recorded. 

If you want to contact me about my guitars, or just talk guitars, I’d be really pleased to hear from you.  E-mail me at: tomcowley@supanet.com or at: gypsykate@hotmail.com