Star Guitars: 101 Guitars That Rocked the World

by Dave Hunter, Billy F. Gibbons (Foreword)

These are the guitars so famous that their names are often household words: B. B. King's Lucille, Eric Clapton's Blackie, Stevie Ray Vaughan's First Wife, Billy F Gibbons' Pearly Gates, Neil Young's Old Black, and many more. Here's the first-ever illustrated history of the actual guitars of the stars that made the music. Other best-selling guitar histories look at the rank-and-file models, but this book is unique in profiling the actual "star guitars"--the million-dollar babies, such as the 1968 Stratocaster that Jimi Hendrix burned at Woodstock, which sold at Sotheby's auction house in 1993 for $1,300,000. Amateurs buy guitars to emulate the stars--Clapton's Strat, Slash's Les Paul--and this book explains the stars' modifications, thus showing how others can recreate those famous tones.

Genres: Music, History

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Serge Pierro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Guitar aficionados will love this book. Within its pages, is a huge selection of guitarists, and the guitars that they are most associated with. Lots of great pictures and stories, about some of the most important guitars in the history of music! An excellent addition to any guitarists library.

[Paul Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this book as a GoodReads First Read. It is amazing. It's a perfect coffee table book for any guitar lover. It was a lot of fun to read more backstory about some of my personal favorite axes, all represented here: Brian May's Red Special, Slash's Kris Derrig Les Paul Copy, and of course, the king of them all, Rick Nielsen's Custom Hamer 5 necks.

[Erlend Bergsagel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was expecting much from this book.

The story of how the guitarist aquired their guitar, What was done to it.
What happened after death and so on.
GREAT!
Good insight, just what I wanted.

But i expected much more from the photos.
Ok to see the guitarist playing their guitar live and/or studio. Great.
Bad print of commercial from the time, ok.
But I wanted much better images of the guitar itself, alone

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read for those of us ""music nerds"" who care what guitars were played on classic albums by timeless bands/players. I was able to create a whole list of guitar players that I need to track down and listen to thanks to this book. Rock on!

[Raunaq Sahu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though I am broadly aware of these iconic instruments and the myths spun around them, I spent quite a while reading all the write-ups and examining the fantastic pictures very closely. Time very well spent, I say.

[Amy Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun book. Pearly Gates remains my favorite. :)

[Amy Lahr · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a beautiful, fun book. great photography and creative layouts. i got this with my husband in mind, who recently started playing the guitar.

[Sam Motes · Rating 5 out of 5]

The axes of the rock gods in all their glory. Loved the read and was engrossed with the images.

[Richard Gombert · Rating 2 out of 5]

The text about the guitars is good, but what's up with the photos?
Too many photos of concert posters, tickets and album covers. This is a book about guitars after all.