Guitar Acquisition

I have owned this 12-string guitar for nearly 40 years, acquiring it on August 23, 1964 when I was 13 years old. Not only was I an aspiring guitarist but I was a huge fan of singer-songwriter Hoyt Axton (of later "Joy to the World" fame and many other musical hits), and loved folk and blues as well as classical music.

On a vacation to the beach area of Orange County in Southern California with my mother, we attended a performance of Hoyt Axton at small folk club called the Rouge et Noir. Backstage after the performance, it was expressed to Hoyt that I wanted to play 12-string guitar, and so he generously offered to give me a 12-string if I returned in a week, which I gladly did. At the time, he mentioned that the 12-string guitar had belonged to a musician, Jim McGuinn, who had co-billed with Hoyt. I was told he left the guitar in lieu of rent after staying with Hoyt. At the time, McGuinn was struggling and unable to pay his portion of rent. Hoyt basically had no need for the guitar and kindly passed it along to me with an original German hard-shell case that belonged to Hoyt.

Over the next year I performed as a co-bill with Hoyt at local clubs in the Los Angeles area and played this guitar as well as a classical guitar. In 1964, Jim McGuinn formed the Byrds and pioneered the folk-rock movement with the January 1965 recording of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man." In 1965, I was very fortunate to experience a preview of "Mr. Tambourine Man" at the Troubadour Club in Los Angeles, CA. McGuinn had on small gold wire rectangular glasses with red plastic inserts. When he came off stage, I remarked that they were really "cool" and he kindly removed them and handed them to me. Over the next few years I continued to co-bill with Hoyt at The Troubadour, The Golden Bear, The Cosmos (formerly the Rouge et Noir), and joined him on a tour of Northern California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska.

Around 1977, I had the opportunity to see Roger McGuinn perform at the Starwood Club (see Alley Rehearsal letter) in West Hollywood, CA as Thunderbyrd. I was able to meet him again backstage and related to him how I had acquired his old 12-string guitar. McGuinn smiled and said that he was happy that it was in such good hands and to enjoy it, which I have done.

On October 26, 1999, my dear friend Hoyt Axton passed away, leaving me and many others with wonderful memories and music -- and naturally, this historic 12-string guitar which I have treasured for almost 40 years.

-- Cindy Shubin

12-string guitars resurfaced around 1957, although Seeger had been playing one for a while. But it just dawned on me around then that, 'Wow, there's a 12-string! I should get one!' And I did. It was a Stella acoustic, but it wasn't the plywood version--it had a spruce top and a really good sound. I lent it to Hoyt Axton and I never saw it again! [Laughs.] He said, 'I don't know what happened to it.'

-- Roger McGuinn
Guitar Player, May 1997, page 45

      GWA: Did you ever use a Stella 12-string, like Leadbelly?

McGuinn: I bought one in 1958. It was a spruce-top Stella, too, which was unusual because most were plywood. But this one sounded almost like a Martin and had a good ring to it. Leadbelly's Stella is at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum. It's cool; the pickguard is thick, enormous.

-- Roger McGuinn
Guitar World Acoustic,
Spring 2000 (#35), page 47

Roger McGuinn:  The first 12-string guitar I bought was probably around 1957.... I went to the south side of Chicago and got what I thought was a Stella, but it had a spruce top. It was a nice sounding guitar.

Modern Guitars:  What guitars are on your favorites list?

Roger McGuinn:  Well, I guess that early 12-string.

Roger McGuinn Interview
Modern Guitars Magazine
February 15, 2006

Hoyt was indeed a generous man with his friends and those around him who he felt had special talents. Originally, in his letter of authenticity, he omitted the actual reason for having this guitar and passing it along. Roger McGuinn states in GP that he "lent" a 12-string to Hoyt, but that was the last he saw of it. Well, what I understood was that Jim McGuinn had stayed with Hoyt and, being tight for money during those days, did not have his rent portion. [See section directly below.] McGuinn left that 12-string and that was basically considered as payment to Hoyt. Hoyt jokingly related that he had trouble just playing six strings and he didn't need an extra set of strings to confuse him further!

-- Cindy Shubin

Within [weeks] of graduating from [high] school [in 1960] .... McGuinn started hanging out at clubs like the Troubadour in Hollywood, which is where he first met his later co-writer Bob Hippard, who was then working as a road manager for Hoyt Axton ....

The Byrds: Timeless Flight Revisited [1998], Johnny Rogan, p. 25

By the end of 1963 .... McGuinn received a phone call from his friend Bob Hippard in Hollywood informing him that the Troubadour's owner Doug Weston needed someone to open for Roger Miller and Hoyt Axton. McGuinn relocated to LA but initially found great difficulty in persuading the denizens of the Troubadour that he was a credible performer.

The Byrds: Timeless Flight Revisited [1998], Johnny Rogan, p. 29

Not long after the Kennedy assassination, McGuinn moved to Los Angeles, into a hotel room for fifteen dollars a week, across the street from Capitol Records, home of the Beatles.

When The Music Mattered, Bruce Pollock, page 82

VG: How did the Byrds form?

RM: Well, I was playing a solo gig at the Troubadour, opening for Roger Miller and Hoyt Axton. Gene Clark came backstage and told me he liked what I was doing, and that we should write some songs together, so we did, then David Crosby came along and started singing harmony with us.

-- Roger McGuinn Interview
Vintage Guitar, December 1997, page 118

Gene [Clark] and I .... met at the Troubadour and we were both guitar-playing, singing, writing people and we wanted to get a thing going. We were playing around in coffee houses and running around trying to find places to play all night long, and there weren't many out here. So we'd wind up at somebody's house and that was the pattern--no pressure at all, no responsibility, just get up and feed yourself, find a place to play all night.

-- Roger McGuinn
The Byrds: Timeless Flight Revisited [1998], Johnny Rogan, p. 31

So I went out to Hoyt's one time, and Hoyt was living in Topanga Canyon, and Roger McGuinn was living in his poolhouse.

-- Barry McGuire
Richie Unterberger Interview (2000)

That was the band. For the next few months we worked almost every night with Dickson, who bribed us with cheeseburgers at the end of the session--never before. For most of us, the free food was a major enticement; we were all living on minimal budgets, hustling free places to sleep, finding low-rent pads, bumming meals from clubs that served food, where the waitresses liked us.

-- David Crosby
Long Time Gone: The Autobiography of David Crosby,
David Crosby and Carl Gottlieb, page 83

"A lot of us were staying at a flophouse called the Padre Hotel," says McGuinn. "It was like $3 a night, over on Cahuenga Blvd. We'd have to take the bus down to where we were rehearsing, which was over on Melrose. I remember sitting at the bus stop and the rednecks would come by and go, 'Hey, Ringo! Yer barber die?' We got a lot of verbal abuse from the citizens of Los Angeles at that point. We'd get to the rehearsal, and we'd rehearse every day. At night, we'd go to World Pacific Studios and work out with the tape machines. That was pretty much our lifestyle. We worked out in the studio, and at the house Chris was staying at. The police would come almost every night, because we would be making too much noise. It was pretty wild!"

"It was a struggle," adds Hillman. "We were trying to get by as best we could. A lot of times, we were getting hired to play on surf demos by this guy -- Jimmy somebody, I can't remember his name. But he would hire us to play demos on bad surf songs. We would get $10 a piece, which in 1964 would feed you for two days."

The Austin Chronicle • July 2, 1997

McGuinn was living...with no great material advantage.... Jim McGuinn...was without transport. He had hired a car, but it broke down on the freeway and was repossessed, leaving him financially embarrassed.... he had even suffered the indignity of travelling to rehearsals on the city bus, an ordeal made worse by the catcalls he received for sporting Beatle-styled hair.

The Byrds: Timeless Flight Revisited [1998], Johnny Rogan, pp. 140-141

McGuinn told Rolling Stone's David Fricke in 1990 he first heard [the Byrds'] "Mr. Tambourine Man" coming from a car radio passing him as he walked down the Sunset Strip [Apr/May 1965]. His immediate reaction was, "'There's something wrong here.' I didn't have any money, I was living in this cheap little apartment, I didn't have a car, and there goes this car with our song on the radio."

The Austin Chronicle • July 2, 1997