It must have been 25 years ago or more when I saw the BC Rich Stealth in the instrument pages at the back of Sounds (a long-dead newspaper-format weekly music mag, brilliant in its heyday). It was pure metal, the odd shaped Gibsons I love, the V and Explorer are still a bit old-man guitar, but this six-stringed ninja star was just impractically wonderful, you couldn’t stand without your feet two yards apart playing this.
Of course it never came to the Glasgow shops so I could never even try one, I got a slightly less pointed Ibanez on my way to old-man guitar heaven in the shape of a Les Paul and I forgot all about the pointy dreams of youth.
Until… I walked into GuitarGuitar in Glasgow the other day and there’s a reissue BC Rich Stealth with the original curvy headstock (BC Rich’s have headstocks these days that look like the bits of paper left over from someone cutting out a people holding hands paper chain thing, or maybe like a broken bottle put through a laminator), and oh my god, it’s in sparkly purple.
I was wiping a tear for my lost youth from my eye with one hand and fumbling for my empty wallet with the other. Now, what can I sell to get this pointless pointy joy…
Thats when the wife sneaks up and whispers in your ear ” You’ve already got a guitar”. I had it with stoves in Tiso last week : (
I nearly bought a yellow version of the guitar Lita Ford used to play (on the cover of the dancin on the edge album) from the music shop that used to be across from Argyle St station (Thompsons?)but it wasn’t set up properly (loose saddles, intonation was all over the place), I was so desperate to have it I offered to do it in the shop for them if they would lend me a tuner and an allen key, they chased me out of the shop I even had the money in my pocket.Bought an black Ibanez a few months later,still regret not being the only goth with a yellow spikey guitar…..You could always trade in the flying V ;-)
Lita Ford – that’s a blast from the past. Saw her support Rainbow, I think on the Straight Between the Eyes tour around 83. Back in the days when you could actually touch the stage if you tried hard enough.
Mighty fit if I remember.
The body actually looks like a guitarist about to slam a chord so the whole thing looks like a stylised image of a guitarist and guitar.
For Gods sake man don’t do it! There are betteer ways to grow old disgracefully. Keep the Paul, nod sagely at todays technically superior youth and say “ahh, but you’ve nae feel”
Lita Ford? Jeez, she was married to Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath at one point, and that guitar of hers was a Bitch, the funny cutaway was for an exra four tuners at the bridge end as it was originally a ten string guitar. Also reissued and hanging in GuitarGuitar!
Joycee has indeed alreday said that she can’t get the hoover in the cupboard for guitar cases, I think it would be one-out/one-in, but I can’t part with anything , definitely not the white V or the Leas Paul in the link.
I do say “ahh, but you’ve nae feel”, but then it does look like music in motion like MacE says.
I want to have my cake of experience and eat it with the fork of youth.