Book Review: Guitar - An American Life, by Tim Brookes

by Rick Landers

Guitar - An American Life, by National Public Radio commentator Tim Brookes, carries readers along the bumpy trail the guitar travelled before becoming one of America’s most fascinating icons and the country's most popular musical instrument. The book is a wonderful tapestry of history and daily life with the author weaving together the evolution of the guitar with his personal story. We experience the conception, the gestation and birth of his first "child", a custom concert jumbo Running Dog acoustic by master builder Rick Davis.

Brookes experiences the trauma of airline employees' free throws when he opens the case of his trusty Fylde guitar. His despair over its fate is soon mended when his wife suggests that he should purchase a new guitar.

A comprehensive history of the guitar needs to be voluminous and break away into many complex historical tangents, derivations and modes. Even then, it would most likely be a lifetime work with limited readership. But, radio commentator Tim Brookes lives in a world of sound bites and the constraints of his media. It’s only natural that he offers us a well-crafted glimpse of the blood and guts of a guitar, as well as an abbreviated view of its social history and world migrations. His book entertains and educates us with well-placed quotes, factoids and his own humorous observations.

Guitar – An American Life is not for study as much as it is for recreation.

The author dips into diverse musical styles and genre with synoptic coverage of classical, jazz, bluegrass, gypsy, metal, folk, flamenco, Hawaiian, punk, rock and turgid stops along the guitar landscape. He covers music styles and how the meaning of the word guitar have fragmented or fused in their own ways into hydras or hybrids. Brookes hits each major historic milestone, conversion and transformation like a marksman. The transformation from acoustic to electric comes in fits and starts with Les Paul going electric with his “Log”, Dick Dale and Duane Eddie pummeling the pompadour crowd with blasts of reverb, Dylan’s voltage jolt at Newport, Jimi's pyrotechnics at Monterey, and the various guitar taunts that stun or disturb like punk, metal, and shred.

I had to pause when I reached a passage where Brookes takes us back to the final day of the tragic tour when rockers Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens flew out of Clear Lake, Iowa after a gig at the Surf Ballroom. I turned to my wife asking her what day it was and she said, “It’s February third.” Forty-eight years to the day when the “music died.” We broke out a bottle of Cabernet and toasted the three young men and their pilot.

Tim’s guitar and story are constructed in intervals, with every other chapter giving us an open door to the Running Dog workshop where Rick Davis artfully crafts the concert jumbo. Davis and Brookes hand select fine pieces of tone wood. Later Davis places delicate ornamentation in a series of steps along the fret board and two maple leaves at the headstock. He bends, taps, sands, measures, glues, and caresses the pieces until they become what some guitarists call a tool of the trade, but for many of us something more magical – a fine guitar and life long companion.

Just as lively as the narrative are the Chapter Notes, the Glossary (Don’t ignore this!) and some descriptions and characteristics of various tone woods by author, guitar builder, and Head of Artist Relations at the Martin Guitar Company, Dick Boak.

Guitar – An American Life is a great read for budding guitarists and for the more calloused crowd who grew up picking out Venture’s riffs in the family garage during the ‘60s. Tim Brookes has not only done his research and pulled together a home run on the history of the guitar, but was gracious enough to invite us to stand at his side to watch, learn and be captivated as unrelated segments of wood transform in the hands of a master craftsman into the guitar of his dreams.

About the Author- Tim Brookes is a member of the Professional Writing faculty at Champlain College, Burlington, Vermont and an NPR commentator. Along with Guitar: An American Life, Tim has written A Hell of a Place to Lose a Cow, Catching My Breath: An Asthmatic Explores His Illness,The Driveway Diaries - A Dirt Road Almanac and other sundry narratives.

Title: Guitar – An American Life (2005)
Publisher: Grove Press, New York, NY
Length: 339 pages

Related Links
Running Dog Guitars
Fylde Guitars

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