Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand songs. The supersized book "108 Rock Star Guitars" demonstrates that six-stringed instruments owned by celebrities and virtuoso sidemen can look as good as they rock.
The 17-year undertaking by photographer Lisa S. Johnson partly benefits the Les Paul Foundation. Paul, the Rock Hall musician-inventor, wrote the foreword before he died. Not a guitar geek? Don't fret.
Whether you define "pickup" as a truck, a dating technique or a guitar part, you can revel in the glitz-and-grit world where these prized possessions reside.
The instruments (one's named Baby) evoke tender talk from macho musicians. But some of these battle-ax beauties have seen more action than a roller derby queen: They bear the gashes and sweat stains to prove it.
The author, who grew up in a musical family, underscores musicians' emotional attachment to their instruments. "I don't believe any serious musician feels that his instrument is an inanimate object," Tom Scholz of the group Boston tells Johnson.
Steve Vai, who went solo after playing with Frank Zappa's band, once described his guitar as "the voice of my heart" in moments of depression, euphoria and "divine love. … I have cried, screamed, prayed and bled through that instrument."
The book lauds the instrument-makers, called luthiers, and the techs, along with the guitars.
Firm gives up fight over Beastie Boys song
A Northern California toy company says it has removed its parody of a popular Beastie Boys song from a promotional video that went viral. GoldieBlox founder Debbie Sterling posted an open letter to the band's surviving members Wednesday saying the company also plans to withdraw a lawsuit it filed for the right to spoof the song "Girls." Sterling says she didn't know the Beastie Boys have a blanket ban on using their songs in advertisements. GoldieBlox makes engineering toys for girls and tweaked the lyrics of "Girls" to talk about spaceships and software. The video had spread across the Internet in recent weeks, with more than 8 million views on YouTube.
