Guitar: An American Life [Unabridged] [Audio Cassette]

Tim Brookes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2005

Shortly before his fiftieth birthday, baggage handlers destroy Tim Brookes's guitar, his twenty-two-year-old traveling companion. His wife promises to replace it with the guitar of his dreams, but Tim discovers that a dream guitar is built, not bought. He sets out to find someone to make him the perfect guitar-a quest that ends up a dirt road in the Green Mountains of Vermont. As Brookes awaits his dream instrument, he explores the guitar's mystique: freedom, the open road, protest and rebellion, the blues, youth, lost love, and sexuality. Arriving with conquistadors and the colonists, the guitar found itself in an extraordinary variety of hands: those of miners and society ladies, lumberjacks and presidents' wives, Hawaiians, African-Americans, Cajuns, jazz players, spiritualists, singing cowboys of the silver screen, and Beatles fans. In time it has become America's instrument, the rhythm of its soundtrack. With adoration, Brookes tries to unravel the symbolic associations a guitar holds for so many of us, musicians and non-musicians alike. His quest takes him across the country, talking to historians, curators, and guitar makers¾including the amiable curmudgeon master-guitar-maker, Rick Davis, who takes a rare piece of cherry wood and creates Brookes' new companion.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Brookes finds that his beloved guitar has been hopelessly damaged by airport baggage handlers, he sets off on a journey to find the perfect handmade instrument to replace it. Inspired by the vast array of choices, as well as by luthier Rick Davis ("a luthier is a guitar maker who charges $1,000 per guitar"), Brookes becomes enthralled with the relationship between the instrument and the people involved with it, and how that link has developed and changed over time. The author, a regular commentator on NPR's Sunday Weekend Edition, contrasts the story of a guitar being built from a few simple (yet carefully chosen) pieces of cherry wood with alternating chapters on the history of the instrument. In doing so, he reminds us that all instruments—even the iconic American guitar—are ever-changing. Instead of compiling a book filled with dates and anecdotes, Brookes wisely chooses to focus on personalities, like Rick, the economics student turned Vermont guitar builder; Joseph Kekuku, the Hawaiian inventor of the slide guitar; and Jimi Hendrix, who, by lighting his guitar on fire, provided evidence of "the electricity of the music" and "combined it with a kind of ritual sacrifice." Finally, Brookes receives his finished guitar, and readers share in his joy as well as in the feeling of continuing a long tradition of music history. Agent, Henry Dunow. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From AudioFile

The guitar is an icon of Americana, whether in the hands of cowboy singers, Hawaiian slide players, or heavy metal shredders. Tim Brookes's cultural history of the instrument is moved along by a personal narrative: a description of the six months in which a master luthier built Brookes his first custom guitar. It's a tad surprising that this very American story is told in a British accent (he's an ex-pat living in Vermont), but Brookes is the perfect reader for his own material--passionate, knowledgeable, and funny. There are some unnecessary tangents and tenuous arguments, but Brookes has a musician's ear for storytelling, a dry sense of humor, and some terrific turns of phrase. D.B. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks; Unabridged edition (May 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786134925
• ISBN-13: 978-0786134922
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)

More About the Author

I was born in London, England, to poor but honest parents who loved going for long walks, preferably in the rain. After discovering at college that I liked not only pickled onions but even Marmite, I knew it was time to leave while I still could. I have lived in Vermont since 1980, though to be honest I did start a cricket club.
I'm the director of the Professional Writing Program at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, a longtime essayist for National Public Radio and the author of all kinds of things, some of which show up elsewhere on Amazon.
The serious part of me founded Writers Without Borders, a non-profit dedicated to teaching writing skills to public health workers in the developing world. The ambitious part of me created the Champlain College Publishing Initiative, a project to engage undergraduates in the process of publishing in the twenty-first century. The active part of me plays a lot of soccer, though nowadays this involves standing in goal and letting the ball bounce off me. I have a wife I love and admire, and two wonderful children. Can't ask for more than that, really.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best "Zen of Guitar" book out there!, June 30, 2005

By 

Kent Ponder (Albuquerque., NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Guitar: An American Life (Hardcover)

This fabulous double account of guitar use and history is a great emotional ride any guitar lover can mentally jump aboard for an entertaining scenic journey. It took me back to the first time I heard flamenco in a music store, and ran home to get my sister so she could hear it -- and the hand-built Villafán classical I bought in Mexico City in 1958, the Conde Hermanos flamenco I bought in Madrid in 1960 and the Ramírez flamenco I ordered there in 1960, and waited for until 1962. Fifteen years ago I bought a hand-built Pimentel here in Albuquerque, for my son. We still have all these hand-made acoustic guitars; they're like members of my family.

My point is that I picked up the book as someone long experienced in guitars, already having read widely on guitars, yet found this Brookes book to add to my knowledge and become my favorite. If you're interested in the guitar, there's just no way you can go wrong buying this book. This is an author who really understands the soul of his subject.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A GREAT read I couldn't put down!, May 20, 2005

By 

William Hill "Bill Hill" (Redmond, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Guitar: An American Life (Hardcover)

You wouldn't believe a book about the guitar could be this enthralling. I got my copy last night, and couldn't put it down until I finished it this morning.

Tim Brookes weaves a story with two threads: a step-by-step account of having his own guitar custom-built by Vermont guitar-maker Rick Davis, and the step-by-step story of how the guitar became THE instrument of American music.

If you've ever played guitar, or enjoyed listening to it in any of its many musical roles - folk, classical, blues, rock or heavy-metal weapon - you will love this book.

The writing is excellent, evocative of many memories - and very, very funny. Example from the Glossary:

"Guitar, bass: Low-end instrument, in every sense, to which a guitarist is banished when the band hires someone better than him to take over lead."

From Singing Cowboys, Hawaiian slide wizards and exploited black bluesmen to the British Invasion of the 1960s, Heavy-Metal Heroes and pimply punks; Brookes evokes them all.

But this isn't yet another book about guitar heroes - this time the hero is the guitar itself.

I'm already thinking about starting it over again...

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy it!, May 1, 2005

By 

Gregg Miner (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Guitar: An American Life (Hardcover)

This one-of-a-kind book by Tim Brookes is the book I wish I could have written (assuming I was an actual writer, or similarly gifted). I.E: Presenting factual information (much rarely, if ever, written about) in an entertaining way, so the "laymusician" can enjoy and understand it. The simple Glossary alone is worth the admission price ("DADGAD: A wonderfully clever tuning that has the combined effect of making a guitarist seem not only dexterous but also emotionally complex. Deep, even. Its use is heavily protected by copyright"). Much like T.V.'s The Simpsons, Tim has the ability to boil down indecipherable history and complex truths into a single witty sentence that most of us can understand and relate to.
Every other chapter concerns the author's experience in ordering his first custom guitar. Those of you who play and cherish new instruments should enjoy and relate to Tim's journey.
The remaining chapters present Tim's unique view of the guitar's American cultural history, in ALL its permutations. Mr. Brookes fearlessly approaches this topic from a fresh, "outsider's" perspective. With it, he hits upon a new simple, obvious (and necessary) explanation of a guitar: "Not a single instrument but a syndrome, a collection of symptoms from a list" (then giving some examples from this list).
What all this boils down to is, in effect, two short "novels" - independent stories presented with so much new insight and humor that I was saddened when each ended.
-Gregg Miner