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Steve, Yes mentioned in 'Boston Globe' |
from Sunday's Boston Globe (wow...Steve in the same breath as Lennon and Hendrix!):
The MFA throws a curve
By Steve Morse, Globe Staff, 10/29/2000
Stroll through the gallery and you'll see priceless guitars that were played by John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Joe Perry, J. Geils, Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick, Steve Howe of Yes, Reeves Gabrels of David Bowie's Tin Machine, and other noted artists.
You might think you're at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. But this is the normally august Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which has held past exhibits on van Gogh, Monet, and other masters, but is now opening a thrilling new show that traces the evolution of the guitar from its Baroque courtyard-nobility days to its gritty rock 'n' roll present.
The new show replaces the van Gogh exhibit at the museum. ''From van Gogh to Van Halen,'' as MFA publicist David Strauss calls this unlikely transition. ''It's a whole new world for us - such a different show from what we're used to.''
Its official name is ''Dangerous Curves: The Art of the Guitar.''
Opening a week from today and running through Feb. 25, it boasts 129 guitars spread over four different rooms, enhanced by video footage of Hendrix, Buddy Holly, B. B. King, Metallica, and others. Definitely not your average MFA cast.
''It's been two years in the making,'' says curator Darcy Kuronen. ''No other guitar show has had this scope. There have been exhibits elsewhere on electric guitars, but we have guitars dating back to 1590. And nobody has examined the guitar from a visual standpoint, which is the theme of this exhibit. We're trying to show that the guitar's design has always mirrored
the fashion and technology of the time.''
Celebrity guitars
Indeed, no other instrument has been tinkered with and customized as much as the guitar. The MFA show will be hyped because of the celebrity guitars it has mounted on the walls, but the real point - and the real thrill of this exhibit - is the juxtaposition of unique handcrafted oddities with more mainstream instruments built by such major companies as Gibson and Fender. Collectively, they offer a vivid look at the design changes in the instrument.
''I went looking for as much variety as I could find,'' says Kuronen, a South Dakota native. He doesn't play guitar himself, though he does play keyboards. ''It's probably best for a generalist to put this together, because some guitar guys can be so myopic,'' he says with a laugh. ''You know, they can talk hours about it, but it might be hard for them to boil it down to
the general public.''
The guitar gets boiled down at the MFA with a little help from pop star James Taylor, who recorded an audio guide that will shepherd visitors around the gallery as part of their admission price (tickets are $16). ''A guitar speaks first and foremost through the music it makes, but it also communicates a tremendous amount through its visual design,'' Taylor says in the audio tour. ''It can be simple and straightforward, or radical and wild.''
Both extremes highlight the exhibit - from the simple flat-top Martin guitars used by folk and country musicians in the early 20th century, to the complicated digital and synthesizer guitars of modern times, not to mention an ''inflatable'' guitar built last year by the Chrysalis Guitar Co. of New Boston, N.H. Its sound is transmitted not by a wooden top, but by carbon graphite backed by a Mylar balloon. And it folds up and fits into an attache case. Not for everyone, obviously.
The knockout for many viewers will be the simplest guitar of them all - a '50s flat-top (Champion model) that John Lennon purchased by mail order for $28. He was playing it when he met Paul McCartney in 1957. Lennon left it in the care of his Aunt Mimi, who added a small plaque at the top of the neck that repeats her earlier warning to him: ''Remember - you'll never earn your
living by it.''
''We got it from a private collector in New York named Adam Sender,'' says Kuronen, whose exhaustive hunt for instruments also led to such sources as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Yale University Collection, the Chinery Collection, and the Musee de la Musique in Paris, as well as the MFA's own instrument collection.
Nielsen's five-neck
Rock fans will be further inspired by the 1967 Gibson Flying V played by Hendrix (who painted psychedelic designs on its body), along with the five-neck Hamer guitar customized for Cheap Trick's Nielsen, who notes in a book that accompanies the exhibit: ''This guitar gets more applause than I ever will.''
''Some people ask, `Why does [Nielsen] need five guitars put together like this?'' says Kuronen. ''It's theatrical, really. And he can't play them for long because they weigh a ton.''
Pop fans should also enjoy the swirling, green-and-red psychedelic patterns painted on a customized electric used by the Strawberry Alarm Clock, the band that had the 1967 hit ''Incense and Peppermints.'' That instrument is mounted right next to Prince's ''Yellow Cloud'' guitar (painted yellow with Prince's
trademark symbols on it) and a customized Gibson donated by Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn, which has a gaudy green alligator painted on its front, right by the sound hole.
J. Geils of Boston's J. Geils Band loaned an electric arch-top guitar, the ES-150 model from 1936. Jazz and blues musicians used to play it - and it was popularized by Charlie Christian, who played with Benny Goodman.
Joe Perry of Aerosmith lent a Supro Ozark model, which he uses as a slide guitar and played on the late-period Aerosmith tune ''Monkey on My Back.''
Another respected Boston musician, Reeves Gabrels, donated a black Steinberger guitar, a headless guitar of carbon graphite. It dates back to the '80s.
Other celebrity guitars come from Chet Atkins (a Gretsch model), Les Paul, and Gene Autry. The wildest guitar, however, is the Stroh guitar from England in 1920. It uses an aluminum horn to amplify its sound. It resembles ''the outlandish contraptions of Rube Goldberg or Dr. Seuss,'' says Kuronen.
Such wild designs, however, are not just restricted to the 20th
century. There is one entire room of classical and Baroque guitars - and some are eye-opening. There are ''lyre guitars'' from the early 1800s filled with neoclassical designs that came into fashion because of the excavation of Pompeii. One even has a gold-painted head of Apollo (the Greek god of music) on its top. Another guitar has three extra bass strings.
''You think of rock stars being goofy, but people were goofy back then, too,'' says Kuronen.
Guitars as we know them are traced back to Spain in the late 1500s. They often belonged to the wealthy. French King Louis XIV played guitar and made it a court instrument. There were triple-neck guitars even then; and guitars also often had five pairs of strings. The typical six-string guitar didn't become the standard until the 1800s.
All this will be displayed at the exhibit, which will be augmented by a merchandising blitz in the MFA's store. There, in the best pop tradition (or worst, depending on your viewpoint), will be such items as a guitar-string bracelet, Elvis playing cards, Jerry Garcia silk neckties, guitar manuals, and two CDs prepared for this exhibit. One is a collection of Baroque
and classical French guitar music played by Boston's Olav Chris Henriksen. The other is a pop CD with tracks by Eric Clapton, Hendrix, B. B. King, and others.
And let's not forget a series of panel discussions and concerts - the most notable by Rock Hall of Famer Bo Diddley at the museum's Remis Auditorium on Jan. 10.
Rock on, MFA.
This story ran on page N01 of the Boston Globe on 10/29/2000.