The Burst Brothers Interview

by Lynne Margolis.

Quite possibly the most famous pair of dealers in the vintage guitar world, the Guitar Center’s Dave Belzer and Drew Berlin set new records for electric guitar auction prices when they bought Eric Clapton’s Blackie Stratocaster, his Cream-era Gibson ES-335, and Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Strat, Lenny, at the 2004 Christie’s auction to benefit Clapton’s Crossroads Centre at Antigua substance abuse recovery facility. They – well, the Guitar Center – paid $959,500 for the iconic Blackie, $847,500 for the 335 and $623,500 for Lenny. That’s $2.5 million for three objects of wood and wire – though in the three years since, their value has undoubtedly climbed even higher.

It may not have been their money, but Belzer and Berlin were the guys sitting in the audience with the paddles, praying they’d win any one of those holy grails. Traveling home with all three – plus a Martin acoustic George Harrison had given to Clapton – was more than they’d dared hope for. As far as career pinnacles go, they crested Mt. Everest on June 24, 2004.

How they did it is quite a story – one they tell practically in unison, easily fitting words into each other’s sentences and nearly mirroring one another’s thoughts (though only Dave punctuates his comments with the occasional conspiratorial laugh). Rapport like that, you can’t fake. Without it, it’s doubtful the team known as the Burst Brothers would have pulled off their singular feat.

In an interview that took place in the Renaissance Hotel lobby bar during the 2007 Dallas International Guitar Festival (where three of the Crossroads Auction guitars were on display together for the first time) in April, they spilled the details to Modern Guitars.

Lynne Margolis: Identify yourselves for the recorder, guys. And tell us how you wound up here.

Drew Berlin: We’re the senior vintage guitar buyers for the Guitar Center.

David Belzer: I’m David Belzer, the softer, quieter voice.

Drew: And I’m Drew Berlin – the more intense loudmouth.

David: We’ve both been players all our lives. Drew toured for 20 years off and on with Little Richard. We’ve both been playing and I’ve been teaching guitar, and I guess, between the two of us, how many years have we got?

Drew: I started playing guitar in 1955, and I’m 56 years old. Dave grew up playing guitar. Dave actually majored in music and got a degree in music.

David: Yeah, that’s right. Somewhere along the way I did get a degree.

Drew: And he’s an excellent teacher, he understands music. I was more into the performance end of it. I went by ear and the seat of my pants. We both started by being musicians playing guitars and liking guitars. I was the guy that always found the guitars for all the other musicians I was associated with, and brought them back and said, ‘Here’s a good one.’

David: Drew’s probably been doing it since the later ‘60s and I’ve been doing it since the later ‘70s. In ’95, we started together in the (Guitar Center’s) Hollyood Vintage Room. They had just built the Vintage Room in ’95 and opened it, I think in January of ’95. I started in February, Drew …

Drew: Dave was managing the store in Hollywood before they built the Vintage Room and I was an independent dealer, full-time musician/independent dealer at the shows, and I was helping Guitar Center buy the correct stuff and pointing out the incorrect stuff, so when they built the Vintage Room they asked me if I would be interested in running it and being the buyer. I said OK. I didn’t know Dave until I went there and they interviewed me and I accepted the job, and then I met Dave.

Interestingly enough, his name and phone number were in my book, but I’d never contacted him. So we had one thing in common; we both loved guitars and music. But we both loved Gibson Les Pauls, especially the sunburst Les Pauls from ’58 to ’60, and my nickname, because I played these guitars live – people thought I was crazy because they were so valuable – they nicknamed me Burst. So after Dave and I partnered up, I said, ‘OK, now we are the Burst Brothers.' And it caught on, I guess, for several different reasons. Everybody thought it was funny and amusing, cute, whatever, and it stuck. That was 13 years ago.

Lynne: Tell me about bidding on the guitars, the holy grails in there. You said it was at the (Crossroads) show that you realized the Guitar Center needed those guitars, right?

Drew: We were at the Crossroads Music Festival (2004) in Texas that the Guitar Center co-sponsored with Clapton, and Christie’s did a really beautiful display and Dave pulled me in there and walked me through and said, ‘This is the Cream guitar and that’s Blackie. These are, like, really significant.’

David: Well, I was sitting there watching, sitting a few feet away from the guitars and just watching people’s reactions as they walked up to the guitar.

Lynne: It was like worship, wasn’t it? I was there.

David: It was. We just sat there and said we should own these guitars. And they should not be under somebody’s bed or hidden in somebody’s closet, they should be out for people to see and appreciate. And I think the CEO of our company at the time, Marty Albertson, was there, too, at the show. He was close by and we mentioned it and he got it into his head that we should do that.

Lynne: Was there a ceiling at which you were supposed to stop bidding?

Drew: We had a meeting before Dave and I went to New York to the auction, and we had discussed a target, how much we were going to pay, and yes, we were pretty organized.

David: We knew which four pieces we were going after and what our limit was.

Lynne: What was the fourth one again?

David: The one that’s not here, because they didn’t bring the Martin, that little 00-18 Martin that was George Harrison’s that he had given to Eric Clapton.

Drew: … that he had given to Clapton.

David: It had the case with the Hare Krishna symbol.

Drew: We had the guitars we wanted to target, and when people realized who Dave and I were, in line, walking into the auction, there was all this controversy and all this talk. ‘Oh, the Burst Brothers are here and they’re gonna pay millions of dollars for Blackie.’ We were told that there was a Japanese buyer that was already committed to paying $2 million for Blackie and that we were going to have to really pony up to beat that and we heard all these other rumors in line about Blackie, and people were making bets on how much Blackie would go for at the auction.

David: At Christie’s, there was a pool going.

Lynne: So, who were you bidding against?

Drew: We were pretty close to the front. We couldn’t see everybody.

David: Yeah, we were kind of in the first row there, so it was really hard to say. I think there was a phone bidder that was going against me. There were a couple of people in the crowd.

Drew: I think everybody was bidding until it (Blackie) hit a half-million. And then it got real quiet. There was a lot of action till 500 grand and then everybody kind of quieted down, and there were a few more people involved, which were …

David: Then it was me and somebody else

Lynne: Would Paul Allen (who purchased Clapton’s Brownie for his Experience Music Project museum) have been one of them?

Drew: I don’t know Paul and I don’t know if his people were there. …

David: We greeted people for 30-40 minutes, right after the auction. People wanted to congratulate us and they wanted to see the guitars. We were fortunate enough to hold the guitars and have people come up and meet us and take our picture and get a close look at the guitar.

In fact, one of my favorite stories to tell is, there was quite a long line, and people from Christie’s escorted this lady up to the front of the line. She was introduced to Dave and I as Clapton’s first and most loyal fan all through his career. I don’t remember her name. She was an attractive woman, probably in her 60s or late 50s, but she was very pleasant and she was from London and she got really close to Dave and I. And I think I was holding Blackie and she said, ‘Congratulations. I’ve never been this close to Blackie and I’d like to see it.’ And I said, ‘here,’ and I took the guitar and put it in her hands and her knees started going and I could see she started to pass out, so I grabbed under her right arm with one hand and the guitar with the other, and the Christie’s guys caught her before she went down. That was a pretty powerful moment, because that guitar had that much magic that it made someone pass out. That’s pretty impressive.

Lynne: I bet the adrenalin was high when you were bidding.

Both: It was.

David: Until that gavel finally came down, it was a very long 10 seconds.

Drew: I thought we did really good on the Harrison guitar, which I personally, growing up as a Beatle fan and Harrison fan, felt was an accomplishment on its own. That was early in the auction. I was feeling great about it. ‘We just bought a guitar that George Harrison played and owned and gave to Eric Clapton. And Eric Clapton used it. How cool is that?’ Then the 335 (Clapton's Cream-era Gibson ES-335) came up. …

David: We got the 335. I was surprised we got that.

Lynne: Why?

David: Well, for one, I had to go over what our limit was (laughs). It was like, ‘Woah, boy, this better be good.’

Drew: Dave made the executive decision. Someone else bid our limit and Dave goes, ‘You know what, that guitar is too important for us to let it go. We’ll try …’

David: I also looked at it like we did really well on the Harrison so I figured I had a little extra to play with. It was an on-the-spot decision.

Drew: It was a little gamble but it paid off

David: And I was surprised because if somebody had gone one more bid, they would have had the guitar ‘cause I had really hit the limit – it was like, ‘oh, boy ….’

Lynne: Did you buy them with the understanding at the time that you would be able to replicate them?

Drew: No.

David: You know, that was the hope, but nothing was confirmed with any of the manufacturers or anything at that point. But it seemed feasible that it might be able to be done that way.

Drew: But we all agreed that it would be something – that Guitar Center would be able to display these and let the public see them rather than being locked up somewhere.

David: Either way, it a charity event. It was all going to a good cause. And though people always go, ‘Oh, it was a charity event, you wrote it all off,’ the fact is, you couldn’t write any of that off. People didn’t realize that, but it was an out-of-the-country charity.

Drew: It wasn’t tax deductible.

David: A lot of people went in with the thought, ‘Oh, it’s a charitable thing, I can probably write it off.’

Drew: What we need to point out is how significant this was for Eric Clapton to let these pieces go, and especially the 335. He felt that by him ponying up some of his most known pieces that meant the most to him, he would get other people involved in his cause. And he was right.

David: And it did. Other people donated.

Drew: Other people saw how serious he was, and I think probably one of the thrills for Dave and I is ... Lee Dickson is Eric Clapton’s guitar tech and has been for many years. He’s a great guy and Dave and I have known him and have a good relationship with him. After the auction, Lee came onstage to congratulate Dave and I from Eric Clapton and the message that we got was, ‘Eric wanted me to congratulate you and let you guys know that you’re the second owner of this 335, because he bought it new.’

David: In the Yardbirds, when he first made some money.

Drew: And it had double significance, being the guitar that he recorded the great solos and songs on, but also it was one of his first new, expensive guitars. For him to let that guitar go was significant. It hurt for him to part with that guitar.

David: Lee was crying. He was fighting back tears.

Drew: It was a very emotional thing. And to this day, as significant as Blackie is and as great as Blackie is, I personally feel that the 335, in my world, is more significant and is probably as valuable, or more.

Lynne: What are your personal holy grail guitars, or were those it?

David: That we’ve purchased?

Lynne: No, that might be out there, that you would still like to get your hands on. Or was it one of these?

David: The 335 for me, my age … I started playing electric guitar because of Cream and because of the Cream farewell documentary. I saw that when I was 12 or something on PBS, and I remember him playing that guitar. And the first guitar I ever owned, electric guitar I ever owned, was a Japanese copy of that, which was way too big for me and I didn’t last with it very long, because it was this really big guitar. But I had to have it because he was playing that. So for me, that guitar would be it. Who’s guitar? I can’t think of somebody else’s ...

Drew: A lot of people ask me at the Holy Grail Exhibit, ‘What guitar would I take?’ And it would be the 335.

David: (To Drew) But if you could buy one’s guitar, it would be what? John Lennon’s guitar?

Drew: Personally, I connect with John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix. In my guitar-playing career I saw Elvis when I was a young kid, and said, ‘I want to do that when I grow up.’ Then it was the Beatles, it was John Lennon who I identified with. And then when I heard Jimi Hendrix, that changed everything, although Jimi Hendrix didn’t have one guitar that would be it. Maybe John Lennon’s Rickenbacker or something like that would be my holy grail. Another guitar player that inspired and influenced me was Chuck Berry. Growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s, I thought Chuck Berry was the one to try to imitate. But in this exhibit, yeah, the 335 Clapton guitar would be my pick.

Lynne: Does Yoko still have the Rickenbacker?

Drew: Well, there’s some controversy that it was stolen and refinished and brought back. But I think, and I’m not an expert on the guitar, but I think John Lennon refinished it himself. It was a natural finish. And he had the Hoffner factory finish it black. I think he might have sanded down the natural finish and had the guitar turned black. And then there was one other one, so I’m a little …

David: We’re not sure where that guitar really is.

Lynne: This is the only place these (three Crossroads Auction) guitars have traveled to?

Drew: I think so.

David: Yeah. They’ve never been out of the safe. Well, we just recently started putting them on display at Hollywood (the Hollywood Guitar Center store).

Drew: We’ve had some interviews with them where they came out where we had Brinks – Brinks had to be involved to pull them out of the safe. They’ve been on the Hollywood guitar floor on Sunset Boulevard at the Hollywood Guitar Center.

David: We bring ‘em out for an interview here and there.

Drew: But this is the first time they’ve been displayed, all three of them together at one time.

David: Or traveled anywhere.

Drew: And it’s very impressive to see the three of them. We haven’t talked about Lenny, Stevie Ray’s guitar. But I think we should.

David: It’s a good guitar. Actually, they’re all good guitars. The 335’s an especially good one.

Drew: Stevie Ray was obviously a gifted, enlightened guitar player.

David: There’s a lot of vibe in that guitar (Lenny). You can feel it if you get a chance to sit and play it. It’s got a lot of vibe.

Drew: And we were expecting to pay a bit more for that than we did, because the Vaughan family – we have a good relationship with Jimmie Vaughan. And they’re kind of a private family. …

David: It was the only guitar they’ve let go out of the family. It was for the cause … one of the cool things about the guitars, though, is the cases they’re with. For me. The Cream case, just having Cream stenciled on there, or the SRV. A lot of times it’s the case that gets you. When we first looked at the George Harrison, the guitar was cool, but the case with his Hare Krishna decal on there, it was amazing the reaction people have just from the cases alone. I had to get that in there. I always think about the cases.

Drew: The road case on the Strat (Blackie), instead of putting Eric Clapton, it was Duck Brothers, is that correct?

David: Yeah, it was just kind of a joke. Inside-joke nickname they used to...

Drew: So people that would see it traveling would know what it was. But yeah, the cases were significant. We’ll talk about Stevie, but I’ve got one story that I want to add before we do. At the very end of the Christie’s auction night, we had Lee Dickson onstage with us and he stayed with us to answer questions and give people information. He was very helpful after the auction, after we purchased the pieces. We were onstage with him. At the very end, after all the people were cleared out of Christie’s, it was just Lee, myself, Dave Belzer, and maybe three Christie’s people. And I was standing talking to Lee, who was facing me, and in the back, in my direct sight, was, I guess, more of a janitor or a pick-up person that worked for Christie’s, that came – and you gotta remember, during the auction the auction folks wore white gloves and there was a spectacle made of these, the music … they presented it really well the way they had the music come in and they had “Layla” playing with the 335. It was just all brilliantly staged the way Christie’s did it. If you can picture all that and the excitement, everybody at the edge of their chairs, waiting to see these guitars. At the very end of the night, we put the 335 back in the original Cream case, and out comes this little old man with a cart …

David: A laundry cart like you would see in a hotel.

Drew: A laundry cart like you would see in a New York hotel on casters with, like, cloth holding it together. And he came out at the very end, and while we’re talking to Lee Dickson, he took the 335 case and put it in his cart upside down, headstock first. If Lee Dickson would have seen that ...

David: Oh, he would have just absolutely flipped. It was just this comical, like Carol Burnett kind of thing, and he started to pick the cases up and put them into his laundry thing …

Drew: I thought that was the end, to cap off the whole night, to see the reality of ‘it’s just a guitar’ and a guy not even knowing how to put it away.

David: ‘Well, it’s gotta go back down into storage, they told me to pick it up.’ He didn’t know who’d just won it or … he just knew the auction was over and it was cleanup time.

Lynne: You said you had a Stevie story.

Drew: Well, this Stevie thing, it was just a really touching thing. First of all, I think that Eric appealed to Stevie’s family...

David: ... for the cause, the charity,

Drew: Exactly.

David: For the Crossroads facility and recovery, especially since Stevie had gone through it.

Drew: Stevie had gone through it. Right. So they wanted to help and what they did was … the #1 Stevie Ray guitar was destroyed by a lighting truss falling on it, and it ended up in pieces, so they felt that this was probably the next most significant guitar. And we were scheduled to be able to budget more for this guitar than we ended up actually buying it for because I think at that point, people didn’t want to compete with Guitar Center; they realized that we had the budget to really buy these guitars. Was that the last one or was that before Blackie?

David: Blackie was the last one. Stevie Ray was the third guitar.

Drew: So, I don’t think a lot of people came up against us too heavy on this one, so we bought it at a fair price. A lot of money, but you know, all things considered … I remember, we didn’t really open that case up and handle that guitar. It came back to Hollywood and the first time we handled it, we were doing an interview, and I opened the case up and I sat down on a stool and strummed this guitar. I got goosebumps and I just got this incredible vibe of where it came from and who had used it and how – I admire Stevie Ray as a great musician and I got to see him play and he was inspiring to watch. And feeling this guitar and playing it was a very special moment for me. I didn’t even feel I was worthy to play the guitar. I played it for a little while and put it back in the case. But when we talked to Jimmie Vaughan about it, he said that no one ever opened that guitar case up or anything after Stevie passed away– and we actually talked to Rene, who was Stevie’s tech at the time, and … Rene’s last name is, um?

David: Martinez?

Drew: Martinez. Great guy, and just a great guitar tech and good guitar player, and he was really into helping Stevie with his guitars, he would mod these guitars and make them just perfect for Stevie. And we talked to him about it too, and he also shared that no one really opened those guitars up after that.

Lynne: You were the first person who had actually played it since Stevie?

Drew: Maybe. It sure felt like it when I strummed it and got the feeling that I got. It was an honor.

Lynne: I know that feeling. It’s like walking into the Woody Guthrie archives or something.

Drew: Yeah.

Lynne: Anything else you want to add?

Drew: We’re fortunate to have been involved with Eric and his foundation and his cause and his incredible guitars, and for someone who loves guitars like we do, this has been a great honor and a privilege, and we have a lot of respect for the guitars and for what we do. It’s been a real thrill.

Lynne: One more question – how do you feel about the fact that you probably have singlehandedly helped to drive up the vintage market?

David: How’s that? (laughs) In what respect?

Lynne: You and the Japanese buyers and others who have really made these things more valuable than houses?

Drew: I don’t think that we had anything to do with that. I think that we have just really gone after the cleanest, best examples of a piece, and if we paid a little more than the next guy, it’s because we understood the significance of it. And I think everyone who’s ever bought a guitar from us has done extremely well. And there’s a lot of people here at the show (Dallas Guitar Festival) that are really grateful that we’re able to find their guitars because they thought they were paying a lot of money for guitars 10 years ago, and they realize now that that was a 10th of what they’re worth today.

David: Are you saying that because of what was paid for Blackie?

Lynne: Not particularly for that. Obviously, we all know the vintage market has climbed and continues to climb, and now something from the ‘70s is considered vintage, and …

Drew: It would be nice to say we’re responsible for that but we’re just one of the many people who have been recognizing good guitars and buying them and selling them. Dave and I, when we partnered up, we shared the same type of feeling; we wanted to make the experience of finding the right guitar and finding the person who wanted that guitar and putting the two together. That’s what we felt we could be really good at, and the experiences –

David: But it should be fun. It should be fun and a win/win situation for everybody.

Drew: It wasn’t all about the money, it was more about the guitars and the people, and when you get a call from someone like Eric Clapton or Carlos Santana saying ‘I just used the guitar that you found me and it was the most incredible thing. I had a special night because the guitar was magic.’ That’s our reward. And it’s been great. We’ve been fortunate to deal with a lot of the greatest guitar players.

David: And a lot has to deal with just the fact that we try to buy the cleanest, the best, and I think, too, that we both play, so we know what a good guitar is. We’ve been doing this for a long time.

Lynne: Do you think the Guitar Center will wind up making a museum of some sort?

David: Well, you know in some sense, the Hollywood Vintage Room is a museum, plus, we have the (Hollywood) RockWalk there too that has quite a lot of celebrity stuff in it, from Stevie Ray Vaughan to Eric Clapton, so …

Drew: That Hollywood Sunset store is a place of interest for the city of Hollywood. There are bus tours that stop there on a regular basis that look at the Hollywood RockWalk of Fame with all of the musicians’ handprints in cement. So it already is like that. It’s considered a must-see for anyone coming into the country, or to California.

Lynne: What’s your relationship with the museums? You said you’ve worked with the Experience Music Project and I would assume you’ve communicated with the Rock Hall as well.

Drew: We really haven’t worked with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame …

David: The Fender Museum, we’ve loaned some stuff to the Fender. I don’t think we’ve loaned anything to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Drew: We did an exhibit called Cars & Guitars of Rock ‘n’ Roll at the Peterson Auto Museum. Billy Gibbons co-hosted it with Guitar Center, and it was a great event. We had Eric Clapton’s guitars and cars, besides Jimmie Vaughan’s; we had Guns N’ Roses, we had Van Halen’s stuff. We had a lot of people who wanted to be involved.

David: As time goes on, vintage guitars or rock ‘n’ roll guitars from the ‘50s, ‘60s will become more prominent in museums, just like a Stradivarius is. It’s like what’s happening with the auction houses. Now you see a Christie’s catalog for fine musical instruments and there’s a ‘52 Telecaster on the cover or a ‘59 Les Paul on the cover. You wouldn’t have seen that four or five years ago.

Lynne: Do you guys have personal collections?

David: We’ve both been playing, and yeah, we have some guitars. (Laughs.)

Drew: I’m so old that I had guitars before they were considered vintage. They were just old, used guitars. My mom thought I was crazy for trading new ones for the old ones when I was a kid, but I always preferred older guitars with some kind of vibe. And I still do. … Guitars are meant to be enjoyed and played. Music and guitars have always been my passion and I think we all have a common bond, people who enjoy music and like playing guitars. It makes it enjoyable for us to do this. We’re around guitars 24/7 and we’re not sick of it yet.

Related Links
Guitar Center's Hollywood Vintage Room
Roundup: 30th Dallas Int'l Guitar Festival
Large Photo: Eric Clapton's Stratocaster, Blackie
Large Photo: Eric Clapton's Cream-era Gibson ES-335
Large Photo: Stevie Ray Vaughan's Stratocaster, Lenny
Large Photo: George Harrison-Eric Clapton Martin 00-18
2004 Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Auction: the Auction, the Burst Brothers, and Lee Dickson
An Interview with Eric Clapton Guitar Technician Lee Dickson

About Lynne Margolis

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