As most baby-boomers I too grew up with music, starting out being force-fed classical (piano lessons, school flute orchestra and acoustic guitar). All of this lead to starting our own garage-band around 1964, yes about the same time as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. The Music scene in Copenhagen, Denmark was surprisingly active with many concerts by many well known and lesser known mostly British, but later also American bands. My first electric gear was a German “Framus” guitar with a “Dynacord” amplifier and a homemade cabinet with a Danish “Peerless” 15” speaker. I was a secret fan of The Shadows; you couldn’t tell your friends that you liked such a mundane group with a nerdy lead guitarist. After having listened to and on some occasions copied most of the British rock groups, we finally found musicians music in the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. I was a particular admirer of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and to a lesser extend Peter Green and Mick Taylor. Interestingly enough I believe they all had a sunburst Gibson Les Paul. Seeing Eric Clapton with that guitar and a Marshall amplifier on John Mayall’s album assured me that this was the equipment to have. I also found (and still do) the Les Paul to be the most aesthetically pleasing guitar ever manufactured. Often I looked for equipment in the classified ads and one day (in 1966 I believe) there was a Gibson Les Paul for sale for the equivalent of $350. That was a lot of money for someone who didn’t have any, so the pleading and begging began. To my surprise, my dad came up with the suggestion, that if I could get a summer job paying at least that amount, he would lend me the money. Getting such a job took no more than a weekend, so I was soon the happy owner of the best guitar in the world. It had been used quite a bit, but was in a very good condition (and still is). A year or two later I acquired a 50W Marshall amplifier and built a copy of an angled 4x12” Marshall speaker cabinet. That too was a learning experience. I first assumed that high quality speakers were the best to use and bought a set of dual cone Goodman speakers on a trip to England. They sounded terrible, so I finally got a set of Celestion speakers and mounted them so there was a direct air-path from the back to the front. This is where I learned, that the artistic creation of sound is very different from designing stereo equipment. One is a creative process while the other is a recreation process and only in the latter case are concepts like linear frequency and broadband impulse response relevant.

My friends and I attended a number of interesting concerts, for example on an excursion to London we went to the Marquee club and listened to a new group with a strange singer and flutist (Ian Anderson) who turned out to be Jethro Tull before they had done any recordings. In Copenhagen we also attended a concert with Jeff Beck, who had a shy singer in a red leather jacket with a hoarse voice by the name of Rod Steward. We also attended a couple of concerts with Cream (Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce) and Iron Butterfly who had a warm-up group by the name Yes. It was actually Yes that was the main attraction for us. A lesser-known band I remember was Colosseum with Jon Hiseman as drummer. I do not think I have heard a better drummer before or since. On one occasion when he played for John Mayall at a concert, half his drum-set had been “taken away” and he still managed to provide the perfect accompaniment.

We only played on occasion and sometimes got token money for the effort, but one experience stand out, namely when we played at the same place and evening as a group called Ten Years After, who had (and I believe still has) Alvin Lee as a charismatic lead guitarist. In a break he tried out my Les Paul and offered to buy it, but I liked my guitar too much, so no sale in spite of the fact that I was a big fan of him, also making a pretty good copy of his signature tune “Going Home”.

When Jimi Hendrix came out with his records, it was obvious to me that this was something very new and unique. The Les Paul could not make that kind of sound no matter how many boxes I bought, so I had to have a Fender Stratocaster (maybe in 1975). Obviously I was not alone with that idea, since at least both Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck also had to have a Strat. In my view the Stratocaster still has the widest spectrum of sounds, from bell like clarity to almost sounding like a Les Paul. Its looks had never impressed me, but when I played it for the first time I was positively surprised by its ergonomic design (well-balanced, light, well-rounded edges and carved out top back end). We also went to a couple of Jimi Hendrix concerts in Copenhagen, but they were absolutely terrible. We could see Mitch Mitchell hammer on his drums, but nothing came out, he was deafened by Jimi’s extremely loud amplifiers and disorganized play, in stark contrast to his early harmonious albums.

In my latter band-years we were focusing more on Jazz-Rock fusion ala Herbie Hancock, Weather Report and others. We ended up playing mostly for our own gratification and I finally decided to stop in 1978 and stored my gear. After many years without my equipment, I eventually got my parents to send the guitars to California. They survived and here they are with a small Fender amp, I recently purchased.