Guitar Man: A Six-String Odyssey, or, You Love that Guitar More than You Love Me

by Will Hodgkinson

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0306815141
• ISBN13: 9780306815140
• Release Date: December 2006
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Guitar Man: A Six-String Odyssey

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!

Inspirational reading for us older wannabe guitarists

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 choi

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

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.

Loved this book!!

If you don't play guitar, if you do, if you want to learn, if you don't care to, if you love music - buy this book! Funny, informative & compleling. Kinda like a better, funnier & more useful version of Nick Hornby's early work (Fever Pitch & High Fidelity). Buy it