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Guitar Man: A Six-String Odyssey, or, You Love that Guitar More than You Love Me | 
 enlarge | Author: Will Hodgkinson
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $7.95
You Save: $9.00 (53%)
New (35) Used (16) from $4.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 96601
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Da Capo Press Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0306815141
Dewey Decimal Number: 787.87092
EAN: 9780306815140
ASIN: 0306815141
Publication Date: December 25, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: New/New; New Paperback Book - No Marks - No Tears - No Creases - Ships Now!
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Product Description
The guitar is the iconic instrument of modern popular music. It is portable, it has history, and it will always be hip. But why has the guitar become such a classic? Will Hodgkinson, a wannabe guitar player, whose only experience was an afternoon's bashing on a friend's guitar at the age of sixteen, set out to find out. Along the way he hoped to teach himself a few chords too. His goal was to get good enough to play before a live audience in just six months--even if it threatened to drive his wife and family to the point of insanity. His trip becomes an odyssey: He chats with British folk legend Bert Jansch, ex-Smith's guitarist Johnny Marr, and reclusive folk guitar legend Davey Graham, as well as Sufjan Stevens, PJ Harvey, and Cat Power's chanteuse Chan Marshall. He travels to America and with a hurricane brewing visits Roger McGuinn from the Byrds. He travels to the Deep South, looking for the spirit of Robert Johnson, and drops in on T-Model Ford, an old bluesman living in Mississippi. Gloriously readable and highly amusing, Guitar Man is classic obsessional nonfiction for a nation of guitar freaks.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
Guitar Man: A Six-String Odyssey February 8, 2008
I picked up this book at the recommendation of another friend who's also been in bands and is an excellent musician. After playing in a number of bands I can honestly say that everything this guy writes is true. I'd swear Will played in one of my bands in the past. I really liked the musicians he traveled around to hang out with. I walked with Will and knew all the other musicians he's hung with. Great book - how being a musician really is!
 An OK Book About One Man's Guitar Odyssey November 18, 2007
This is the story of a man in his 30s that decides to learn how to play guitar and sets the goal of playing a gig within six months. The author's quest leads him to a number of characters, most of them eccentric if not downright weird. He even takes a junket to the Mississippi Delta to learn about the roots of the blues, a visit to Nashville and Memphis and a trip to see Les Paul perform in NYC.
While the story has its merits I think that the author spent too much time describing drug use and other behaviors that many guitarists (myself included) feel are negative stereotypes which leave the false impression that all guitarists use illegal drugs or drink to excess. A lot of musicians use drugs and drink like fish but there are just as many of us out there that do not. This book would have been every bit as interesting to me without the drug stories.
In any event, the book ends shortly after the gig; which went well, all things considered. At the end of it all Mr. Hodgkinson realizes that his dream of performing in a band was only one tentative step forward in his development as a musician and songwriter and he proceeds to work towards correcting bad habits that he picked up in his rush to learn the guitar on the fast track.
Overall it was a satisfying read and very accurately conveyed the hopes, misconceptions and dreams of guitar students everywhere. The sensation was not unlike talking to a student guitarist that was enthusiastic, idealistic and a trifle over-optimistic; like many guitar students I've met.
Inspirational reading for us older wannabe guitarists May 9, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
As a 40+ wannabe guitarist I finally picked up an acoustic guitar and tried to learn after 20 years of 'thinking about it'. A few months in I literally stumbled across this book in a shop whilst looking for some music so that I could finally answer the question being asked of me, "When are you going to learn to play a real song on that thing?". This book had me glued from start to finish and I am now all fired up again! I am shamed to admit that I had never even heard of the great Davey Graham and many of the other characters that so shaped the guitar.
As earlier reviewers have said, the premise of the book sounds a little cheesey, and perhaps suggestive of an unlikely film script, 'untalented latecomer goes on quest and finds hidden guitar skills on the way', but this book is much more than that. It provides a superb potted history of the guitar from a UK/US blues-folk-rock perspective whilst the main protagonist is honing his new found skills. I found it inspiring. Sure, Will Hodgkinson isn't your average Mr Joe Public, he seems to have indirect connections to several key players, which may be helped by his journalist background, and maybe some of his 'memories' are a little odd - he could only have been 5 or 6 years old when Marc Bolan died so can he really recall his TV appearances? And the coincidence with watching "The Servant" just after a night out with Davey Graham, artistic license perhaps? But, these very minor points aside, to all you ageing wannabe guitarists out there - read it, dust off the old guitar and get strumming!
Now 'all' I need to do now is find out how to play 'Anji'!
P.S Whilst researching on the Web it is interesting to note that Davey Graham is on his uppers again - if this is partly through this book and/or Will's article in the Guardian then this is great for all guitar fans!
General-interest collections will love it; music libraries will find it a fine leisure reader's choice. March 6, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
GUITAR MAN: A SIX-STRING ODYSSEY, OR, YOU LOVE THAT GUITAR MORE THAN YOU LOVE ME comes from a 34-year-old who decides to play guitar even though he's tone deaf and has no rhythm. His quest to become a musician at a later age involves instruction from friends and guitar 'greats' alike, in the process revealing much about the music world's finest figures from PJ Harvey to the eccentric old bluesman T. Model Ford. His odyssey is more than autobiography: it charts the evolution of guitar, methods of playing, and more and takes readers along on a rollicking journey through the music world in the process. General-interest collections will love it; music libraries will find it a fine leisure reader's choice.
Inspiring, actually January 23, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Though the premise sounds pat -- a bit like a book proposal: journalist with no musical training picks up guitar with the goal of playing a gig in six months, and then writing about it -- Guitar Man in fact blossoms into an enormously entertaining, and by the end, exciting story. Will Hodgkinson is a funny, charming, smart, ballsy, sympathetic guide to the world of guitar and guitar obsession. Plus he's got taste, too, and common sense, and his own peculiarly interesting (and peculiarly British, I suspect) ideas of what the guitar should be and how to go about learning to play it. For anyone who loves to play but isn't "professional," it's a fantastic lesson on why mistakes don't matter if your heart's in your fingers. And for American readers in particular, the book gives us the pleasure of encountering, in person or legend, Davey Graham, Bert Jansch, our own Jackson C. Frank, as well as understanding that maybe Eric Clapton isn't god after all. Now I need to learn to play "Anji" -- and only regret that I can't hop on over to Bert Jansch's flat for an impromptu lesson.
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