Episode 14

Broken Guitars and Broken Hearts

I've been thinking more and more about people and their relationships with their guitars (and their guitar-adjacent instruments), and what happens when those relationships break up. Or more specifically, when guitars get broken, and those broken guitars break hearts.

There are different kinds of guitar breakage. Sometimes breaking a guitar is the thing ya gotta do to make a point. Then again, sometimes guitars break when you don't want them to break.

This one runs from the ancient suburbs of Cairo to the stages of London, Leeds, and the Monterey Pop Festival. I also explore a work by the artist Christian Marclay, who destroyed a guitar to tell a heartbreaking story.

And I couldn't help adding four stories of guitars that broke my own heart.

All of that in under 30 minutes? I'm dedicated to making the most of your podcast listening time, and you're welcome.

If YOU have any stories of broken guitars that broke your heart (or guitars you broke to make a point) I want to hear them. Tell that story to your phone, send that audio file to me at aphotguitar@gmail.com, and with your permission I'll include them in future episodes.

I like this one. I hope you do, too.

Support the project here!



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A People's History of the Guitar

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About your host

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Grant Samuelsen

Grant Samuelsen has led a multimodal professional and personal life in the worlds of contemporary art and music, business, and academia, and he has degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Carnegie Mellon University. He has published essays, articles and criticism, and he's been a guitar player since he was 13. He's interested in everything, which is a problem, but the history of the guitar has held his attention for the longest period of time, so he's doing this podcast. He's originally from the Chicago area and lives in Madison, Wisconsin with his family, guitars, and a female Staffy named after one of the male members of Black Flag.

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