Bought me a Stratocaster
and put it in tune
Started singing with the “Devines.”
the next afternoon.
Became “Shayne and The Rebel Raiders.”
a rockin’ band
But when we morphed to the Phantoms
we had a lot more fans
Elvis turned me on to guitars, but when Buddy Holly was on the Ed Sullivan Show, he played the one I wanted.
When I asked the folks at Lowe’s Music if they knew what kind of guitar it was, they said it was a Fender Stratocaster, and they could have one for me in two weeks.
I was very excited until they also told me that it cost $473.00.
Where was a kid like me gonna come up with that kinda dough?
Lowe’s thankfully came up with a plan. First, they took my trumpet in on trade and then put me on a $14-a-month payment plan.
When they called a couple of weeks later to tell me that my guitar had arrived, within the hour, I was strapping on my new Strat in front of the mirror and there staring back at me was a “Rock Star.”
Next, I bought a couple of guitar books and then spent hours and hours in my bedroom just trying to learn a few chords.
After a few days, it became evident that it took much more than just dreaming about becoming a “guitar man.” So far, all I had to show for my efforts were bleeding fingers.
A couple of weeks later, still struggling with my guitar, I got a surprise phone call from a local singer named Shayne, who invited me to join his singing group, The Devines.
Surprisingly, shortly after becoming a Divine, there I was on stage in a talent show, and not only did we finish third, (see newspaper article above), but we also got booked for a local car club’s dance the following weekend.
What was special about the car club dance was I became a professional musician even though I still couldn’t play the guitar because they paid us.
As I look back on my musical career, I was unplugged at the beginning and at the end.
Some thirty years later, I returned to Winnipeg for a big reunion with Neil Young, The Guess Who, BTO, Burton Cummings, and my band, The Jury. That, however, is another story for another time.
Hell, I hadn’t even seen my guitar, let alone play it, in about ten years, so I sold it to Randy Bachman of BTO fame.
The value of a ’58 strat is all over the place, so it took us a while to come up with a fair price.
At some point during the negotiations, Randy mentioned that when he opened for Neil Young, they used to talk backstage about the Winnipeg days, and Neil had said, “George had one of the first cool guitars in Winnipeg.” How cool is that?
Unfortunately, Randy is now pissed at me because he didn’t realize that I had my strat refurbished back in’65, which he claims diminishes the value.
So, like a car, I guess you shouldn’t sell a guitar to a friend either.