Instrument

Pat Graham

• Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780811874748
• eBook ISBN: 9781452108957
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Instruments tell stories through their appearance as much as through their sound. Pat Graham's photographs capture the intimate relationship between musician and instrument told by the signs of wear of fingers on frets or keys, chips, scratches, and modifications by the artists who have played, beaten on, bled over, and made them their own. For more than ten years, Graham has been documenting these amazing instruments and collecting stories about them from musicians on the road, in clubs, and at home, including members of The Smiths, Sonic Youth, The Flaming Lips, R.E.M., New Order, Wire, Fugazi, Built to Spill, Band of Horses, Modest Mouse, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and many more. His gritty and beautiful images reveal the physical nature of music.

THURSTON MOORE AND KIM GORDON

Sonic Youth

1959 Fender Jazzmaster guitar
1961 Fender Jazzmaster guitar
1965 Fender Jazzmaster guitar

1966 Fender Jaguar guitar
1980s Gibson Sonex guitar
1970s Epiphone Thunderbird bass

 

 

The gold 1959 Jazzmaster was a gift to Thurston from Patti Smith after the big gear theft of 1999. [The band’s touring equipment was stolen from a Ryder truck in Orange County, California, in 1999. Only four pieces of equipment have been recovered to date.] I gave Thurston the stickers with various phrases in the Japanese Osaka dialect. In the last few years, this guitar has been used mainly to play the song “Expressway to yr Skull.”

The seafoam green Jazzmaster that Thurston is playing is one I bult for him in 2007 for the Daydream Nation concerts. It’s a vintage 1965 rack on a new Warmoth body.

The black Jazzmaster is a ‘61 and has been around since about ‘99 and is Thurston’s main axe for Sonic and side projects. It goes where he goes, and is subject to all manner of abuse (files, knitting needles, etc.) so if I haven’t seen it for a while, it’s often a bit “broken.” When we start a Sonic tour, I usually need to give it some special attention to get it show-worthy again.

The blue 1965 is one of my favorites, and was also a post-gear-theft donation. This one’s suffered the most onstage abuse of any Thurston guitar. It’s most notably used for the anything-can-happen feedback freakout at the end of “Pattern Recognition.” It would often end up stuck high in some lighting truss and once dropped about 12 feet off the stage in Dublin. Fortunately, one of the security guys found and returned the big chunk of headstock that broke off, so we were able to glue it up and get it back into rock action.

Probably the most unique guitar to get stolen in ‘99 was a four-string beast called “The Drifter.” It was a Gibson Sonex that had all the frets pulled out, and had just four thick strings tuned to pretty high tension, played with drumsticks by Thurston for the song “Eric’s Trip.” I had this neck and body around and got the idea to re-create The Drifter so they could play “Eric’s Trip” again. This was the first guitar I built for Sonic Youth. Since then, I’ve done a couple more that are a little nicer.

The red 1966 Jaguar is one of the few original Sonic guitars that didn’t get ripped off in ‘99, and it has a lot of the classic Sonic modifications. In my opinion, it’s the best surviving historical example of their original batch of axes. Back in the ‘90s it was mainly played by Thurston on songs like “Silver Rocket.” Since then, Thurston has gone on to almost exclusively Jazzmasters, and this has become one of Kim’s main jams.

This early 1970s Thunderbird bass also thankfully didn’t get ripped off in ‘99. It was Kim’s main bass during the Daydream Nation era and came in handy when they revised those songs in 2007. She had it inscribed, most of it still intact, by John Brannon, the singer of Laughing Hyenas (and ex-Negative Approach), who toured with Sonic Youth in the late ‘80s. When Sonic supported Neil Young in San Francisco, the local union crew broke off the headstock while pushing a rack of guitars through a too low doorway. Whoops! Careful guys! It has been nicely repaired and is one of the most rockin’ basses around.

—Eric Baecht

LEE RANALDO

Sonic Youth

1999 Fender Jazzmaster guitar
1974 Fender Telecaster Deluxe guitar
1978 Travis Bean Standard guitar

The coral-colored U.S. Vintage Series Jazzmaster was purchased after the gear theft in 1999. It’s heavily modified, with mid-’70s Fender wide-range humbuckers and straightforward wiring (pickups, toggle, volume, output). A Mustang bridge usually rounds out the Sonic Youth mod, “Jazzblaster” designation, but this guitar, like al...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• JAMES MERCER
• COLIN NEWMAN
• JAMES CAUTY
• JOHN REIS
• JUSTIN VERNON
• IAN MACKAYE
• JOHN DOE
• IAN CURTIS
• JOHNNY MARR
• TODD TRAINER
• JOE PLUMMER
• BILLY CHILDISH
• DOUG MARTSCH
• ISAAC BROCK
• JEREMIAH GREEN
• JOHN MCENTIRE
• NELS CLINE
• BERNARD SUMNER
• STEVE ALBINI
• BOB WESTON
• RYAN JARMAN
• GARY JARMAN
• KATE NASH
• JIM FAIRCHILD
• JANET WEISS
• JOANNA BOLME
• CORIN TUCKER
• DAVID PAJO
• JERRY DAMMERS
• STEPHEN MALKMUS
• PETER BUCK
• HAL BLAINE
• NICK ZINNER
• KURT COBAIN
• ALEX KAPRANOS
• TREVOR KAMPMANN
• TOM PELOSO
• DAVID STONE
• BEN BRIDWELL
• JEFF TWEEDY
• TIM KERR
• THURSTON MOORE AND KIM GORDON
• LEE RANALDO
• STEVE SHELLEYKIM DEAL
• KIM DEAL
• ERIC JUDY
• STEVEN DROZD
• WAYNE COYNE
• TOM CULLINAN
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• Copyright