Objects of Their Affection: Five Musicians and the Instruments They Love

Page 1 of 7

After winning a 2006 Golden Globe for his co-screenwriting on Brokeback Mountain, novelist Larry McMurtry caused a certain amount of confusion when his acceptance speech deviated from the familiar litany of award-show thank yous. Instead of acknowledging the usual suspects—mom, dad, husband, wife, agent, stylist, Jesus, etc.—McMurtry made the following statement: “Most heartfelt, I thank my typewriter. My typewriter is a Hermes 3000, surely one of the noblest instruments of European genius.”

No one seemed to know what to make of this eloquent appreciation. Was McMurtry joking? Was he sending a message in code? Was he just weird? The subtext of this speculation—that a man couldn’t be sincerely grateful to a typewriter—is that an artist can make do with any old instrument.

In a conversation with mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile (formerly of Nickel Creek), the essential fault of such a premise becomes apparent. Thile can still remember—in a scenario straight out of a Merle Haggard song—how it felt when he learned that his favorite mandolin had been sold to a “fellow in Kansas City.” “It was,” he says, “like watching the girl you let get away and go marry some other guy.” A sorrowful picture emerges: Some shark-toothed dandy, a rose pinned to his lapel and a straw boater propped on his head, sits behind the wheel of a ragtop convertible. In the passenger seat beside him is a mandolin, draped in a white veil. The dandy hits the gas and the convertible rips down the open road, chased by a tail of clanging cans, while the veil unfurls in the wind, the mandolin’s strings rippling a twang of farewell. Can you imagine what that felt like? Put your constant companion, your chief collaborator, your best voice, in that passenger seat. And imagine that companion whisked away by a man from Kansas City.

What McMurty indicated—and what all the artists featured here make clear—is that instruments are more than mere utensils, more than a means to an end. They are irreplaceable halves in partnerships as unique as any other love affair.

Poet Christina Rossetti writes, “For one is both and both are one in love.” Brian Johnson implores us, “Pick up your balls and load up your cannon for a twenty-one gun salute.” The following rock ’n’ roll soldiers are nothing if not “one in love” with their cannons. Here is our salute.