Rock and Roll Archaeologist: How I Chased Down Kurt's Stratocaster, the "Layla" Guitar, and Janis's Boa

by Peter Blecha

Dubbed the "Indiana Jones of Rock 'n' Roll" by Seattle’s The Rocket, Peter Blecha’s life reads like a dream come true. From an adolescence spent hoarding 45s, he turned an obsession with music memorabilia into an amazing career, amassing an astonishing collection of rock-and-roll artifacts while hobnobbing with music industry bigwigs and helping to establish a world-famous museum. Here Blecha recounts his favorite adventures in the field, from porchside interviews with Jimi Hendrix’s father to haggling with Courtney Love for Kurt Cobain mementos to a tense auction battle for Eric Clapton’s “Layla” guitar. The book also relates his involvement with Microsoft mogul Paul Allen’s quest to build a gallery devoted to Jimi Hendrix, which, with Blecha’s help, eventually became the renowned Experience Music Project. Blecha’s story is a unique celebration of fandom taken to obsessive lengths, culminating in a lifetime of incredible experiences — and a basement overflowing with the stuff rock-and-roll dreams are made of.

Genres: Music

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 20, 2005

Reviews

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

A love letter to collectors, fanatics, archivists, curators, and museums.

Blecha begins by talking about how he had a self-imposed mission to collect items from music history, especially related to Jimi Hendrix and Northwest music. From there, his passion led to consulting on Paul Allen's to-be museum for Jimi Hendrix and music, which turned into a job for Blecha at what became the Experience Music Project (now the Museum of Pop Culture, or MoPOP).

The book not only chronicles Blecha's experience in collecting for himself and for EMP, but also the way EMP grew from an idea to a large museum, including stories about different locations that were scouted and how the projected size and budget grew, but mainly focuses on how the collections and exhibits grew.

This ends up being a beautiful tribute to collectors, music, museums in general, and EMP specifically.

[Adrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the marketing of this book is a bit misleading unfortunately. The moniker, displayed on the cover, says “How I Chased Down Kurt’s Stratocaster, The ‘Layla’ Guitar, and Janis’s Boa”. The unfortunate, and I guess expected answer, is: “have the cofounder of a multi billion dollar tech company give you a blank checkbook and tell you to buy everything”. “Chase down” is a bit of a stretch, all of the items mentioned in that blurb were acquired in the really fascinating and exciting method of: paying fair market price at an auction for them. They were also only mentioned in basically one paragraph, as a lot. The nickname of “Indiana Jones” is thrown around a lot but for a vast majority of the significant items mentioned in the book, they were acquired with someone else’s money and bought either at a public auction or sold to him from someone just calling on the phone and offering to sell it.

Now the beginning of the story, the authors acquisition of his own personal museum of Northwest music artifacts, is where the real treasure hunting portion is and that was a fun read. The rest of the book details the nitty gritty of how to start a museum from scratch. This is also of value to someone with an interest in archiving and preserving history. The author mentions that they wanted the museum to look past fame and glamour to get to the heart of the music of his surroundings by acquiring lesser known items. That’s true and I applaud them for the vast effort they did on that portion of the museum. But that same principle wasn’t applied to the marketing of the book. The cover goes right for the most recognizable names and items but those are unfortunately the least interesting acquisition stories (hence why they’re basically reduced to one paragraph). The book should have advertised what it really was and what the author truly cares about, the preservation of northwest music history. The book would still be just as informative with that info upfront.

So if you’re here to learn about modern treasure hunting, read the first half. The second half is a lot of “and then I got a call from a guy in Michigan who has X and I wrote him a check from the billionaire and now the museum has it. What a find!” But there is genuine value and merit on the insight of how a museum comes to be and how important it is for even just one person to try to preserve the history around them.

[Cameron James · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Rock And Roll Archaeologist (How I Chased Down Kurt's Stratocaster, The "Layla" Guitar, And Janis's Boa)", by Peter Blecha is an intriguing book about how Peter Blecha (the author) goes on a journey to establish the "Experience Music Project" (EMP), which is a studio/museum in Seattle, Washington. The genre is considered music. I got the book from the Bob Herzfield library in Benton, Arkansas, and is 207 pages long. Blecha works long, hard days for many years to track down the best possible artifacts for the museum he has worked so hard on. Some of the items that he has tracked down include: Nirvana's lead singer Kurt Cobain's famous guitar "The Stratocaster", and Eric Clapton's prestigious guitar "Layla", which Blecha had won at an auction for $500,000. The museum also included a gallery dedicated to rock legend Jimi Hendrix. I gave this book a 5/5 stars. I absolutely loved this book because of three things. I thought the book was very interesting, from Blecha's journey to getting these special artifacts, to the additional bizarre stories that made you want to read more. I liked the rock and roll aspect of the book. I myself am a big rock and roll fan, especially classic rock and roll, so this book fit me greatly and kept me interested. I enjoyed the pictures that were occasionally scattered throughout the book. The pictures gave you an idea of what some of the interesting artifacts looked like. I would suggest this book to anyone who is a fan of rock and roll, and rock and roll artifacts.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

2007 wrote: Blecha has a fascinating life that tends to provoike envy and jealousy in me. As an obsessive collector of a variety of things, i understand the passion that drives him. He (unlike most collectors) was able to make his obsession into a career. As an amatuer expert of the Seattle rock scene he became a archivist, historian, radio personality and eventually curator of argueably the best rock museum, The Seattle Music Experience. So these are his adventures that bring him into many great situations, meeting interesting collectors and music personalities. The sub title to the book reads...."How I Chased Down Kurt's Stratocaster, the "Layla" Guitar, and Janis's Boa" and it is what grabbed at me from the bookshelf. and although the first two ahve plenty of attention paid in the book, there is literally one line that happens to mention Janis's Boa. The start of the book is rather repetitive and needless if reading for entertainment and excitement, but as an archivist I am sure Blencha wants the whole story told for austerity.

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting summary of the author's life as it pertains to collecting rock 'n' roll memorabilia, but it is mostly dominated by his work with getting the Experience Music Project museum in Seattle up and running. Would've like longer (for lack of a better word) anecdotes in collecting, as many items are acquired without too much effort, but I guess that would've required making this a work of fiction. Quick read though, and the anecdotes are interesting and thus the book is worth a look.

[Joseph Schlesinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating account of Blecha's research & pursuit of some true rock & roll treasures. I also recommend his book _Taboo Tunes: A History of Banned Bands & Censored Songs_.