The Guitar Center in Hollywood has a special place in my heart, mainly because it completely blew my mind when I went their the first time and the second time, I was truly impressed that I could pick up really expensive guitars and play them without a shop assistant jumping on my back and beating me to the ground.
My guitar shopping experience in the UK has always been a negative one where you either get the sniffy muso shop assistant who looks down their nose at you and deliberately tries to undermine you or banjax you in equal measure. I always remember phoning up Holiday Music in Leytonstone in the late 90s and asking if they had a VG-8 in stock. “No,” said the snotty assistant on the end of the phone, “That’s a guitar synthesiser (wrong!) and we don’t stock those”. Meanwhile, I’ve got a copy of Guitarist magazine open in front of me with their advert telling me they had the units in stock and that’s how I got their phone number!
But the Guitar Center is such a laid back place and the staff are friendly and helpful and there are so many different guitars to drool over, it really is Guitar Heaven.
Guitar Heaven 2004
Outside the massive shop front, there is a walk of fame where famous guitar players have left their hand prints. I snapped this picture of Tony Levin’s entry because it made me laugh so much – don’t worry, he’s not deformed or a space alien, he was wearing his funk fingers.
Tony Levin’s Hand Print on Guitar Center Walk of Fame
So where are we going with this? Well this is a stream of consciousness post because my attention was brought to Peter Gabriel’s recent performance at the self-same Guitar Center, and Tony Levin is his long-term bass playing chum and I have good memories of the place. So I thought I’d combine all these elements into one gooey mess.
Enjoy!
The Guitar Center