----------------------------------------------------- MARCH 1973 ----------------------------------------------------- Source: Guitar Magazine Steve Howe Interview - Part II By Ken Achard KA: Steve, the guitar collector -- you've got some really tasty guitars. Tell us about them! SH: Yeah, I could tell you about them. Really, in the Iast nine years I've started collecting. The first couple of years I was stuck with a child guitar that I was learning on and then I started getting really fascinated with Gibsons; really started collecting somehow -- that was once I got my 175, that was the first Gibson of all and I only had that a couple of weeks and somebody said, 'Well, here's a pre-war Gibson and it's only fifty pounds' so I had another HP and I had to have it, you know, and this was the start of something that was going to be bigger than me because since then I've bought, I think in all I've got about eleven Gibsons now. The Switchmaster is my favourite -- it's just been repaired I've got a new pick-up on it and now it sounds beautiful. I've also got a pre-war Gibson which I think is a model called the FDH. KA: That's a Francis, Day & Hunter. SH: And also I've got an LO/50 in perfect condition, absolutely in perfect condition, with the old Gibson lettering which I got from you which is lovely. It's got grovers on it and it's been all cleaned up, you know. It's lovely. And two Gibson steel guitars. One's a student one from the mid-60s and the other one is, I don't know -- way back. It's got a neck like you've never seen before and it's got a Charlie Christian pick-up on it and it's got the old writing and a very unusual shape on top of the head which is very beautiful. And I've got two Epiphones! I've got an Epiphone AI Caiola and an old Epiphone Acoustic guitar at home. I'm not sure what it is. I've got the miniature 175 which I think they called a 125 3/4 guitar. And the Les Paul, the Les Paul Junior, that's the old one I told you about that a friend sold me in America. It was something he wanted to pass on to somebody that liked it. My prize guitar is the 175: the one I always have with me. If anybody took that away from me I'd have to get an L/5 or something to replace it. It's like an L/5 for me and it has all the qualities of a guitar like that. The antique guitars I'm very fond of and they date from the 17th and 18th centuries. They're two very unusual guitars. The first one's a ten-string guitar five courses, and the other one is just an unusual guitar: it's like a lyre guitar. I got those from a shop in Poland Street and it's quite a new shop, antique guitars and antique woodwind and a few keyboards and a lot of oddities and a lot of books. I've just bought a lute from him that's a really good buy. I bought the original prototype. It's a really super lute. On a Spanish guitar you've got the beautiful range, especially the high, but on the lute you're more near the bottom with the earthiness of things and especially with the resonant bass strings for your chords, you've got wonderful depth. KA: Are you going to play it in any of your music? SH: Well, hopefully, in the future we will. We quite often pick up different drums and different instruments: I buy a lot of different guitars. On every album I've done I've always introduced new instruments that I've got. It becomes a joke in 'Advision' you know -- all these guitars at home and which one am I going to play -- which one sounds best here. And that's always what I want to be able to do. The first person that did this thing was in fact Barney Kessel. 'You've got to have eight guitars if you want to be a professional guitarist.' He said this on one of his albums but he felt you needed eight guitars: acoustic and electric and that figures to me and I usually take six or seven down with me when we start doing an album. Of course it works the same on stage.  We reckon being beside the stage combination of different instruments to complement the basic runs and the songs. But, getting back to my guitars, um, along with the two antique and the lute, I've got the Ramirez which I bought from Guitar Village -- really I'm not a hundred per cent happy with it, I do want a classical guitar. Mine is a flamenco guitar you know and I tend to feel that, although I played it on stage once with the Philomusic London, which was a classical concert: I played a new piece of music called 'When Wenceslas Looked Out' and we're going to perform that again next year with, believe it or not, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, we hope. In the early stages they said to me they could be interested and we could perform it at the Queen Elizabeth Hall or something. So that's something I want to do next year. We may possibly record it. It just depends how you're going to project a show like that, you know -- are you going to mike the orchestra, are you going to project it in a slightly different way from a normal rock concert. That's what I'd like to do. I'd like to be able to mike things up, record it as well, but um, the first consideration being that you have to give the audience the best out of the concert. You're not going to hear the small guitar there so well above the orchestra unless you mike it and if you just mike the guitar you have this terrible problem of having a guitar always inside of the hall, you know, the orchestra in the middle, when it should be vice versa, of course. KA: You mention the strings on your Ramirez. SH: Yes. KA: Do you experiment with strings, makes and gauges, or not? SH: I have been, yeah, much more recently. I had a lull, really. I like Gibson strings. I like the power of them and every time I tried something else I had to rip them off straight away because they didn't have any power. Compared to Gibsons, very few strings are actually particularly loud, you know, so l like Ernie Ball strings now. I used them on the twin-neck and I use them on the bottom of the twin-neck on a reasonably light gauge but on acoustic guitars I've always liked Martin light gauge on Martins and then I tried the Darco and I used them on a couple of acoustics I've got. On nylon, I like the La Bella classical with the black. They seem really pretty good strings. I try the other makes: every time I've got back to La Bella, they really seem to ring a lot. Other guitars, let me think. KA: On the subject of strings, what kind of pick do you use? You like to have your own pick with you all the time don't you. SH: Yeah. I haven't got a pick on me right now. These aren't picks anybody can buy but I'm thinking of investigating them because I think they're a great pick and possibly they may come out on sale somewhere. I just don't know really what to do about it. Many years ago there was a guy called Tony Richardson. He used to work gigs somewhere originally and he said, 'Oh you try this pick' and I tried it and I loved it and it was a very big solid pick. They're a funny kind of celluloid. There was a chap called Filando or something at Selmer's who was making these years ago and Tony gave me one years ago and I used it for about a year and it never wore out and I eventually got the guy to make me some more. He made me about a dozen at one time of which I've still got three left and I still play with them and he's just going to make me some more, so although I've got some more picks at home, I play thumb picks, finger picks. When I'm in the studio I've always got some different plectrum and I usually say 'Hey, how does this sound' glung glung glung and then I pick up mine and I say 'How does this sound' and they all say, 'That one, that's the one'. KA: Because you're happy with it. SH: Well, basically because I'm happy with it and also because it's a very positive pick. You can't fiddle around with it because if you've got a heavy thick pick, when you lay it on the strings, you know, you've really got to lay it right because it can rattle and you know, whatever. I find loose picks, really, oh, I can't really pick with them. I can't get across. I hit a string hard when I go, you know, and possibly I like the response of a really solid pick. KA: Who were your heroes in the early days? SH: Ah, many of them were coming up, the ones that I admired. Modern-day heroes kind of pass me by in an odd way, you know. I felt that the older heroes were the ones I could hold on to most successfully and learn from. KA: Hank Marvin? SH: Well, Hank Marvin -- yeah, I passed over -- I passed over that a little although I learnt all his pieces and I thought he was great you know, the time he was going round playing things. But as I was saying earlier, I kept having this Corn, you know, from people older than me who were really honestly trying to help me, who were saying 'Listen to this. See what this does to me. See if you like Barney Kessel', and at a very early age I was listening to Barney Kessel and wondering 'Ah, how can I ever play like that'. It's marvelous and of course I still do the same thing really.  I still love Django Reinhardt and the special records I have of his that really do get me off and I have to hear them every now and again to renew my response to them, you know. KA: Do you think he influences you? SH: Yeah, very much so. One of his recordings of Nuages which was on electric guitar just floors me every time, you know, and it moves me enough every time to help me to go in different directions to find what I am going to eventually end up playing. KA: So you'd advise other young aspiring guitarists to listen to the same guys, would you. I mean, to be traditional in their approach. SH: I don't know. Yeah, I think they couldn't do any harm by hearing these guitarists and hear how they were playing, especially Charlie Christian who started most of the rock guitarists off but everyone who followed in their direction is as relevant really like the next stage of Kenny Burrell and Wes Montgomery -- you know, marvelous -- and they've learnt a lot from the past but they're also leaning to the future and others of course, John McLaughlin and all these guitarists who are around today. I still get up in the morning and put a Chet Atkins 1954 tape on that they did in jamming with some friends and I'm off, you know. I'm into a guitar day, you know. I have days when I'm going at the guitar all day long and I might walk in the lounge and possibly hear the Villa-Lobos Preludes by Julian Bream. The personality really comes across in that. A few years back I only listened to, say, mainly rock groups -- except the Beatles and the Beach Boys -- and I cut myself off from what was happening. I mean I knew it was out there -- I used to hear it at friends' houses. I still feel a bit hemmed in with Jimi Hendrix records around because I heard them so much at one time, you know. He didn't seem to alter my style as much as I thought he could have done. I didn't want Eric Clapton to -- I didn't want to get on that style, you know.  I felt that in a way lots of guitarists had got to a certain style and stopped and I couldn't see me going there. KA: But do you ever feel that you want to return to the kind of 'grass roots' of it all. SH: Well I feel I do every day. I feel I'm never that much away from rock and roll -- I never turn my back on any music. Through the years I've sorted out what's really important from a particular era. Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, problems, corrections, or additions, contact YesinthePress@aol.com