PHOTO BY GABE HERMAN
From left, a guitar used by John Lennon,
Ringo Starr’s drum kit and George Harrison’s first electric guitar.
Met jams with rock greats’ instruments
BY GABE HERMAN
The Met museum’s new “Play It Loud” exhibit
is an impressive collection of memorabilia
from rock-and-roll history. It’s like walking
into a giant shrine to the history of rock music, and
is worth a visit for hardcore or even casual fans.
The show, which opened April 8, is chock-full of
guitars and other instruments that were not only
used by the greats, but during their prime years.
The exhibit is co-organized with the Rock & Roll
Hall of Fame and features about 130 instruments,
mostly guitars.
In fact, the exhibit is so good and so comprehensive,
that after a while, it almost becomes numbing
how many great items there are around every
corner.
Oh, look, it’s Keith Richards’s Gibson electric
guitar from the late ’60s, which he hand-painted
himself. And there’s Muddy Waters’s Telecaster
electric guitar that he used from 1958 until his
death in 1983. There’s the guitar Chuck Berry used
to record “Johnny B. Goode.” And Jerry Lee Lewis’s
home piano for decades.
There’s a John Lennon Rickenbacker electric guitar
that he used on the Beatles’ 1964 North American
tour and for recording “A Hard Day’s Night”
and “Beatles For Sale.” Ringo Starr’s drum kit is
there, along with multiple George Harrison guitars,
including his fi rst electric guitar from 1959.
The list of legendary musicians represented here
is seemingly endless: Eric Clapton, Buddy Holly, Bo
Diddley, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, The Who, Bruce
Springsteen, Jimmy Page, Jerry Garcia, Prince, Joan
Jett, Metallica and more. It goes all the way up to
modern artists like The Roots and Lady Gaga.
PHOTO BY GABE HERMAN
A guitar at the Met show that was smashed
by Kurt Cobain.
Each room just features more amazing items.
“This exhibit is incredible,” a man was overheard
saying near the end of the exhibit. “I can’t believe
how much stuff they have.”
If smashed instruments are your thing, there’s a
few of those, too. Such as a mangled Fender electric
guitar, totaled by Kurt Cobain during a 1993 show
in Inglewood, California. He destroyed the bridge
pickup by using a technician’s drill, allegedly to impress
Eddie Van Halen, who was at the show.
And there’s a Gibson guitar smashed by Pete
Townshend around 1973. And — talk about a great
Jimi Hendrix item — a fragment of the Stratocaster
the “Purple Haze” great destroyed at the 1967
Monterey Pop Festival in a ritualized sacrifi ce.
Then you enter the next space and there’s Hendrix’s
white Woodstock electric guitar casually standing
upright in a glass case in the center of the room.
There are also a few costumes, including a “dragon”
suit worn by Jimmy Page during Led Zeppelin
live performances from 1975-77.
The exhibit’s many excellent posters are not to be
overlooked. Along with some great psychedelic artwork,
there are posters for some truly momentous
moments in rock history.
There’s ones for Woodstock and the 1965 Newport
Folk Festival, where Dylan went electric.
There’s the poster for the Beatles at Shea Stadium,
and the only known one for The Quarrymen, the
earlier group with John, Paul and George.
In a sad piece of history, there’s a Jan. 30, 1959,
poster for the Winter Dance Party Tour in Fort
Dodge, Iowa. It is the only surviving poster for the
show, which featured Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens
and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson. Four days
after the show, all three artists died in a plane crash
near Clear Lake, Iowa.
There aren’t too many Bob Dylan or Greenwich
Village folk-related items, but there is a poster for
a 1963 Dylan Town Hall show in Midtown. The
poster said tickets could be purchased at the Folklore
Center, at 110 MacDougal, the famous Village
shop whose founder Izzy Young recently died.
All the items in this staggering show couldn’t be
listed here, but the full, awesome collection can be
seen at The Met until Oct. 1.
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