Getting a read on the guitar

Guitar: An American Life
By Tim Brookes
Grove Press, 321 pages

Clapton's Guitar: Watching Wayne Henderson Build the Perfect Instrument
By Allen St. John
Free Press, 254 pages

Even without looking at sales figures, it's easy to see that the guitar is the most popular instrument in America. How else could you explain air guitar, or the fact that ugly dudes have been shagging groupies since the dawn of rock and roll? And, with apologies to those who prefer mandolins, banjos or fiddles, the term is "guitar hero," after all.

In different ways, these books try to determine why the guitar is so special. They seek their answers through custom-built acoustic guitars. Guitar builders (also known as luthiers), at least the most talented ones, appear to be modern alchemists, creating golden tone out of wood, wire and will.

Tim Brookes' quest for this knowledge begins after an unfortunate encounter with airline baggage handlers, a group never accused of turning anything into gold. Just shy of his 50th birthday, careless handlers shatter his beloved Fylde six-string he'd been playing for more than 20 years. At his wife's urging, Brookes decides that he will replace it with the guitar of his dreams, hand-built by Vermont luthier Rick Davis. Brookes, a commentator for NPR's Sunday "Weekend Edition," decides to chronicle the construction of his Running Dog concert jumbo, but also wants to tell a parallel story about the guitar's ascension in American, a tale that will be "part history, part love song."

Brookes achieves his goal with by weaving the story of his new guitar's construction and the evolution of guitars in the American consciousness in alternating chapters. As you learn about the selection of woods for the sides and soundboard, you also find out about how the Spaniards brought guitars to America. You get an education on bracing, and on why blues musicians called the guitar "the starvation box."

If there's any fault to be found with the book, it's that Brookes lets his opinion occasionally lead him off track (hey, he is a commentator). He's clearly a fingerstyle guitarist, so he takes more than one opportunity to poke fun at flatpickers. And in one chapter, Brookes writes that "the best young classical guitarist in the world and the best slide guitarist in the world are both women." That may or may not be true, but it's only an opinion. Furthermore, he doesn't tell us which two guitarists he's talking about, so we can't even form an argument in our minds.

At other times, Brookes assumes his readers all share his knowledge about music. In the chapter titled "Love Me Tender/The Worst Trip," which details the hardships traveling musicians have faced, he delves into the ill-fated "Winter Dance Party" tour of 1959. At one show on the tour, "in Duluth at the Armory on January 31, one of those in attendance was a boy named Bobby Zimmerman." Most baby boomers probably get this reference, and I would argue that all serious music fans should get it, but not all of the readers are necessarily going to be serious music fans. Younger people who are trying to learn about the guitar, the audience who might stand to gain the most from this book, might not know that Robert Zimmerman is the given name of Bob Dylan. At the end of this chapter, Brookes describes how terrible conditions on the tour bus forced Buddy Holly to charter a plane and how Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper got on that plane after playing the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, on Feb. 2, 1959. He leaves us with this: "The show finished just before midnight. It had already started to snow." Maybe I'm just being picky, but that was 45 years ago. Not everyone knows that all three musicians were killed when the plane crashed.

These examples might give the impression that Brookes is careless and his writing sloppy. That's not the case. All three were found in a relatively short span of pages. Overall, the book is vastly educational and pleasantly entertaining. Brookes teaches without lecturing, and weaves two enjoyable tales into one enjoyable read. It's like listening to a Doc Watson-Merle Watson guitar duet: each part is excellent on its own, but together the finished product is a work of art. If you love guitars, or want to know why others do, pick up Brookes' book. You'll have a hard time putting it down.

Allen St. John takes a far less bumpy road to find his subject. He decides to give himself the gift of a custom-built guitar for his 40th birthday, and he wants the instrument to be built by Wayne Henderson, a gifted builder and picker from Rugby, Va. (pop. 7) he has read about in Acoustic Guitar magazine. The feature happens to mention that Eric Clapton is on Henderson's long waiting list.

From there, a serendipitous turn of events eventually gives St. John a hook for his story. As it turns out, Clapton played sound engineer Tim Duffy's Henderson while touring Duffy's New York City studio in 1994. Clapton fell in love with the instrument and decided he wanted one of his own. Shortly thereafter, a man comes to see the engineer and says he wishes to purchase the guitar for his daughter, who is a huge Clapton fan. The engineer doesn't want to sell it, because he knows the wait is long and the idiosyncratic Henderson might not build him another. Then the man makes him an offer he can't refuse � $100,000. From there, the story of Clapton's guitar takes on a life of its own and leaves you wondering if further embellishments of the story are even true.

And while Clapton's guitar looms large as a character in the story, its construction and completion 10 years after that day in the studio are but one aspect of the book.

"Clapton's Guitar" really is about the life of a man, and about how the soul of a man goes into his work.

Yeah, that makes it sound a little philosophical, but it really isn't. Besides, Henderson is a colorful main character that most novelists could only dream of making up. Until a few years ago, Henderson was the town's mailman. He builds prized instruments, but he builds relatively few; in 35 years he has turned out about 300 guitars � roughly the same number the Martin factory turns out in a day. If you're hoping to find out Henderson's secret to making a great guitar, you will. But good luck doing anything with it: "Well, you just get a pile of really nice wood and a sharp whittling knife," Henderson says. "Then you just carve away everything that's not a guitar."

You can't help but be taken by Henderson's common sense and country-boy charm. He works when he wants, on what he wants, whether the client is famous or not. St. John tries to figure out how to move up the waiting list, since he encounters people who have waited more than a decade and counting. One sure way to get your instrument quickly is to win the guitar picking contest at the annual Wayne C. Henderson Music Festival. Others try pestering, pleading and pies but know that it might take all three � and a whole lot of prayer.

St. John's quest to see his guitar � as well as Clapton's � completed takes the reader on a journey that stops at a pizza joint halfway between Altoona, Pa., and Montclair, N.J.; a repair shop in West Concord, Mass.; downtown Nashville; an auction of Clapton's famous guitars in New York City and even Game 4 of the historic Red Sox-Yankees American League championship series in 2004.

All the while, Henderson holds court in his workshop, where a group of regulars dubbed the General Loafers help him pass the time as he whittles piles of wood into works of art.

In the end, it isn't important if Clapton got his guitar (though you'll find out). The important question is, "Why is the guitar so desirable?"

The answer lies within Wayne Henderson.