Guitar

An American Life

By: Tim Brookes

Narrated by: Tim Brookes

Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

What was it about a small, humble folk instrument that allowed it to become an American icon? The guitar represents freedom, the open road, protest and rebellion, the blues, youth, lost love, and sexuality. Tim Brookes explores with adoration these ideas and how they became entwined with the history of America.

Shortly before Tim Brookes' 50th birthday, baggage handlers destroyed his guitar, his 22-year-old traveling companion. His wife promised to replace it with the guitar of his dreams, but Tim discovered that a dream guitar is built, not bought. He set out to find someone to make him the perfect guitar, a quest that ended up a on a dirt road in the Green Mountains of Vermont, where an amiable curmudgeon master guitarmaker, Rick Davis, took a rare piece of cherry wood and went to work with saws and rasps.

Meanwhile, Tim set out to write a kind of chronicle of the guitar, as he said, "not a catalog of makes and models, nor a genealogy of celebrities, but an attempt to understand this curious relationship between the instrument and the people involved with it, and how that has grown and changed over time".

He discovered that the instrument, first arriving with conquistadors and the colonists, ended up in the hands of a variety of people: miners and society ladies, lumberjacks and presidents' wives, Hawaiians, African-Americans, Cajuns, jazz players, spiritualists, singing cowboys of the silver screen, and bluegrass and Beatles fans. Inventors and crackpots tinkered with it. In time, it became America's instrument, its soundtrack.

When Tim wasn't breathing over Rick's shoulder, he was trying to unravel the symbolic associations a guitar holds for so many of us, musicians and non-musicians alike. His journey takes him across the country talking to historians, curators, and guitarmakers.

©2005 Tim Brookes (P)2005 Blackstone Audiobooks

Held my interest

through all 11 hours. I loved the final sentence!
This audio deserves a second listen!

very poetic

great overview of the history of the guitar. great insight of the ways and lifestyle of guitar players. I truly enjoyed this book.

A masterpiece!

Any additional comments?

This book is a lovely combination of music history, a wry look at American culture, and the story of how a master craftsman builds a fine instrument. It's all told with a clever narrative structure and a British sense of humor.
Want to know how a Conederate warship's sinking of a whaling ship near Hawaii led to the rise of blues guitar? This is the place. Want to know the difference between the finish on your guitar and a Stradavarius violin, and why one has cat pee in it? Read this book.
The author reads this book like he's sitting in your living room telling the story over a few beers. I want to meet him and see his new guitar.
I liked this so much I'm going to listen to it again.

Highly enjoyable

If you are even mildly interested in the guitar or the history of guitar related music in the US, you owe it to yourself to listen to this book. I'm a bit of a guitar freak even though I can barely play. I enjoyed every minute of it and was legitimately sad to see the time remaining count down on my iPod. Highly recommended.

A Worthy Read

it's not often that a nonfiction book truly captures your attention. However, for anyone interested in the history of guitars this book is a treasure.

Tremendous

Tim's book moves smoothly between his history of the guitar and the story of the construction of his new guitar by luthier Rick Davis. Having been a guitarist for thirty years, I found the book fascinating and informative and the conversations about the decisions involved in the new guitar of sufficient interest that I contacted Mr. Davis or Running Dog guitars and have started a discussion about possibly having one built. I'm not suggesting that everyone should, your call entirely, but it's rare to find a history book this interesting and compelling.

Highly recommended

Almost excellent

I really enjoyed this book. I play the guitar, but I've never been interested much in guitar anatomy. This book makes both the history of the guitar and the details of its parts (and how they combine to make music) very interesting. I found particularly intriguing the role Hawaiian music had to play.

I agree with another reviewer that the book would have benefited greatly from music clips to bring to life the author's descriptions. I quickly grew tired of the blues riff that marks the start of each chapter and would have liked to hear a different riff each time (or a better one repetitively). I could have done without all the f-bombs in the second half. Most of them are quotes when discussing the punk era, but they don't add anything to the narrative.

Overall, an excellent listen. It's great in 30-minute chunks, which is how I ended up listening during a daily walk.

The Story of the Guitar

One of the best books on the first ever because though historical in scope the author takes you on various journeys that help you to love this instrument and its history along with the players that make it great. It's made me laugh and times made me sad but mostly made me go back to hug my own guitars! Well worth the investment of time and money.

Amazing from Start to Finish

He did a great job of interweaving the two storylines (the creation of his custom acoustic and the story of the guitar in the US). I also enjoyed the way he conveyed information about relevant parts of the guitar here and there. Even when it was a part or aspect I already knew about, he managed to keep it interesting.

Great Listen.

If you're a guitarist; meaning you have one and are interested in it, this book is for you. A great history of the guitar, framed with the building of the authors acoustic, spans from the beginnings to the new century. Well worth ever cent, I didn't want it to end and am now looking for another book to follow this up with.