 1963:
1962
Gretsch 6122 Country Gentleman (walnut finish) gold hardware, Neo-Classic
inlays, dial-up mutes, Gretsch Bigsby vibrato, two Filter'Tron pickups:
In May Harrison upgraded to this more deluxe Gretsch he found at Sound
City London, and after removing the mutes -- and later the bass-side screw-up
knob -- used it extensively for touring and recording (first on "She Loves
You" and then
With The Beatles). It's also
seen in the famous Royal Command performance. When this guitar went
into the shop for repair, Sound City gave him another one (below), but
while in the shop this first Gent was stolen. It was later recovered,
and Harrison, preferring his second Gent, relegated this one to backup
duty. (Both Gents are photographed together at a November '63 gig.)
This Gent met its fate on a roadway. On 2 December 65 the Beatles' limo, bound for Glascow for the first stop of the band's last British tour, hit a bump at Berwick on Tweed. This first Gent had been lashed to the boot (trunk) and came untied, and it wound up on the road. When Ringo Starr noticed a trucker flashing his lights, he notified the driver, Alf Bicknell, who pulled over. "You've just lost a banjo back down the road," the trucker told Alf. Alf broke the news to Lennon, who told him that if he found the banjo, the driver would get a bonus -- he could keep his job. Alf doubled back and found it -- in pieces -- but kept his job anyway. As the band was in a hurry, they left the pieces in the road and kept going.
 1963:
Maton
Mastersound MS-500 (vintage unknown):
Before Harrison's first
Gent went into the Sound City shop, it needed repairs during a May visit
to Manchester, where he borrowed this Australian solidbody from Barratt's
of Manchester and used it for a few performances. It shows
up in photos from shows at the Grafton Rooms, Liverpool, on 12 June and
the Winter Gardens, Margate, in early July. After that, Harrison
reportedly returned the guitar to the shop, where, according to a recent
story in the Liverpool
Echo, "a few weeks later, Roy Barber,
rhythm guitarist for Dave Berry's backing band The Cruisers, swapped his
Fender Stratocaster for a Maton at Barratt's store and was told by the
owner it was the one recently used by Harrison. Barber stopped using
. . . the guitar several years later and for 20 years it lay abandoned
in its case in the attic of his home in Totley, Sheffield. After
his death aged 55 in 2000, Barber's widow Val loaned it to the National
Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield." Mrs. Barber, who stated her
desire to send her son to Cambridge, put this guitar up for auction in
June 2002. "There is no doubt in anyone's mind that this was the
guitar which George Harrison played," Mrs. Barber asserted in the Echo
piece, "but it would be great if the person from Barratt's could come forward
to verify it 100 per cent." One eventually did: Brian
Higham, the former manager of the shop, who wrote that Neil Aspinall brought
the Gent in for machine-head repairs, a job which Higham did himself.
The guitar didn't go at aution, but a sale was subsequently brokered by
Music Ground, which apparently bought the Maton from Mrs. Barber and sold
it to Englishman John Marks for £35,000. Marks explained that
he is "collecting famously owned guitars for an investment, and to open
a museum in Malta to benefit a childrens charity." After the sale
Marks got another of The Hollies, Eric Haydock, to sign a letter
stating Haydock remembers the band's road manager, Johnny MacDonald, being
asked to deliver the Maton to Harrison.
So what's the deal with this guitar? Physically, it is identical to the one shown in photos, except for replacement control knobs. Also, there are inconsistencies in stories surrounding its origin: Previously, Barber had claimed he'd received the Maton from Tony Hicks of the Hollies, ostensibly a gift from Harrison; Hicks had denied the story. And who took possession of the guitar, Aspinall or MacDonald? Perhaps these points will be sorted out in time, but the weight of the evidence and examination of the woodgrain suggest this is the instrument Harrison is seen playing. So the next time you're in Malta, look for this guitar. |
 |
1963:
1963
Gretsch 6122 Country Gentleman: When his first Gent went back to Sound
City for repairs, they gave Harrison this one, identical to his first except
for the mutes, which were flip-up rather than dial-up, and Harrison came
to prefer it. Seen on the Sullivan shows and used on the '64 and
'65 U.S. tours, this was the guitar for the Beatles' first
flush of worldwide success. What happened to this guitar?
Brian O'Hara of The Fourmost, interviewed by Andy Babiuk, said Harrison
gave him the Country Gent during a studio visit at Abbey Road and that
he (O'Hara) remembers trading it for something or other. But in a
recent 
1963:
Gretsch
6119 Tennessean (vintage '62 or '63): Harrison found the perfect
country-rock twang he'd been looking for when he got this double-pickup,
single-cutaway "Type 2" model -- with painted-on f-holes -- late in the
year, and before long it edged out the second Gent as his go-to guitar.
It's first spotted at the '63 Christmas shows, later at Carnegie Hall,
and used on the For Sale sessions and for tours, concerts
and TV appearances well into '65 -- most notably in the opening sequence
of the film "Help!" and at the triumphant first Shea Stadium concert that
August. It took a back seat for a while but resurfaced for the Sgt.
Pepper sessions. Where is this guitar? In the foreward
for Jay Scott's Gretsch Book (1992), Harrison says he owns
a number of Gretsch guitars, including a "1957 Tennessean, which to me
is the Eddie Cochran / Duane Eddy model." Apparently he's referring
to his model 6120, the "Chet Atkins" hollow-body, a gift from his wife,
and although in his
Guitar Player interview he provides photos
of his Gretsches, the '62/'63 Tennessean is not among them. Likely
it was stolen from a storage closet at EMI's Abbey Road studio, along with
a couple other guitars.