The Gibson ES-335

This week my real life job as a TV director, editor and sometime cameraman took me to Martha’s Vineyard to tape a musical called “The Runaway Beauty Queen”.  The writer/director/co-producer of the show is a friend of a friend and I agreed to shoot it and edit it on a shoestring. As part of the project, I had to stay overnight and was put up at the home of the other co-producer. Her name is Judy Belushi Pisano. Yep, that Belushi. Her lovely home on the island was filled with wonderful memorabilia of her husband and she clearly enjoyed having his things displayed prominently. As a collector, I never had much use for provenance-or, put simply, who owned the guitar before I got my mitts on it.  I never felt that who owned it was of much consequence and certainly wasn’t worth paying a big premium for. After all, I collect guitars, not famous people’s stuff. Clapton’s ’64 ES-335 was worth around $15,000 to me because that’s about what a well played stop tail 64 is worth. Of course, not everyone agrees with my disdain for provenance; the Clapton 335 sold for nearly $900,000. You get the point. So, while lunching at the famous Black Dog Tavern in Vineyard Haven along with the show’s musical director ,the conversation turned to music. And guitars. I’ll digress here a bit. The musical director is a gentleman named Paul Jacobs who is a scarily talented working professional musician who toured with Meatloaf, Roy Buchanan and Edgar Winter. Anyway we were talking about vintage guitars and Judy said “I have John’s old electric guitar but I think it’s in kind of bad shape-it hasn’t been played in a very long time.”  When we went back to her house, I asked if I could see the guitar and she obliged. When I opened the case I was looking at an early 70’s Fender Telecaster Custom-you know, the one with binding and a sunburst finish. It had been borrowed in the years following John Belushi’s tragic death by a blues player who put 13’s on it and used it for slide. Then it was put away for many years just like that. When I picked it up to play it, I could see the neck had been pulled into a very concave state by the heavy strings. It barely played. The strings at the 5th fret must have been a full quarter inch off the board. Yikes.  I asked if she wanted to have it put back into playing condition and she said yes. So, after the shoot, I left with a 73 Telecaster that had been John Belushi’s main guitar. It had certainly been played by John and probably by the likes of Matt “Guitar” Murphy and Steve Cropper. It felt different than just another Telecaster. It had history. Suddenly, provenance took on meaning… I mean, I got it. Would I pay an extra $850,000 for a guitar played by Eric Clapton? I think not. There are probably hundreds of guitars played by him, if not thousands. And, he’s still alive and will likely play a lot more of them.  But this was John Belushi’s main guitar for around 10 years  and I’m lucky enough to be its caretaker for a short time.  I’ve already restrung it and adjusted the truss and it has responded nicely. Now, I’m going to go upstairs and play it. I think I’ll start with “Soul Man”.

Joliet Jake Blues didn't play guitar on stage when the Blues Brothers performed. After all he had 2 guitar giants with him-Steve Cropper and Matt Murphy. This was John's 73 Telecaster that is currently owned by his widow, Judy Belushi Pisano, who is one of the nicest, kindest, most generous people on Earth.

Sunday, July 18th, 2010 at 8:05 pm • Uncategorized • RSS 2.0 feed • leave a response or trackback