Fingerboard Stories
Then there are those artists that I can still see live today, but wish I had witnessed in their imperial phase. To have seen the Stones in ’69 or ’72, supporting the releases of landmark albums like Let it Bleed and Exile on Main Street would be nothing short of exhilarating. Or to catch Dylan in the turbulent mid-1960s, on the cusp of electrifying his sound and completely changing the game.
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“When I saw two kids who worked there in London wearing T-shirts of a local San Francisco band, I knew I was onto something. When I heard their record, I knew they were the one band that could sell to both mainstream and underground metal audiences.”
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In the early days of his career, Willie Nelson went through a variety of guitars. Nelson was signed to RCA records, and that meant that plenty of guitar manufacturers were lining up to gift him instruments to test. Willie started out on Fenders, experimenting with Telecasters, Jaguars and Jazzmasters, before switching to Gibsons. Then, in 1969, the Baldwin Company offered Nelson one of their 800C Classical Acoustic-Electrics, complete with a Prismatone pickup and amp.
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And all of those eras have standout albums. Barrett’s first, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, remains much cherished to this day. Atom Heart Mother and Meddle, with their bold, side-filling progressive suites, are rightly regarded as prog rock landmarks. And I don’t need to extol the virtues of Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and the Wall to you. The countless column inches already devoted to those landmark albums in the annuls of rock journalism tells you everything you need to know.
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As the story goes, the Allmans’ version of the track came about after Gregg Allman gifted the self-titled Taj Mahal album to Duane for his birthday, along with a bottle of Coricidin pills (Duane had a cold that day). Inspired by the rendition of Statesboro Blues on the album, Duane, who had never played slide guitar before, washed the label from the Coricidin bottle, fashioned a makeshift slide from it, and taught himself how to play the track.
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